Hi everyone. In this video we're gonna do this. We're gonna get Pac-Man to follow a path  and animate in Figma. Kind of why did he say kind of? Because before we get started, just so you know,  animation in Figma is quite tricky. So we're gonna use a plugin, okay, called Motion.

It's really kind of cool timeline,  key frame based animation. But once we've made it, Figma doesn't really want  to accept the thing that we've made. There's workarounds and we need to do this in the course A,  because I get asked how to make uh,  animations on a path all the time for Figma. And because you are gonna spend ages on the internet looking  at animated stuff, animated vectors,  and people are gonna show you up until a point  and then they're not gonna talk anymore. All the tutorials that I've ever found, they get  to the point where you're like, now implement them in Figma. And they don't.

They just kind of get to this point  and go look, job done. But there are some quirky things about Figma  and at the moment of this recording, a lot  of these animations get reduced to gifs,  which work and we will do. But there's a few things that don't. So let's get into it. Explore, understand, be super knowledgeable. And of course I know Figma are waiting for me  to release this video to make all of what I just said  and what I say in this video to be not right.

Hopefully there's an update soon where we can import,  I don't know, JSON or animated SVGs. So do check that it might be ready, it might be out. I feel like it's gotta be on the roadmap not being right up  until today. So now let's get in. Okay, to get started, I've got a phone frame. I put a background image in it.

It is in your exercise files if you want. It's called abstract background. It does nothing except it look cool  and I made a little Pacman if you weren't  there for the essentials course. If I draw out a circle  and go to my selection tool,  you can make this like num, num, num, num. But okay, so that's how I got my Pacman. You draw something and then jump back in.

Okay, so for this to work, we need a path, okay? For it to follow. So I'm gonna use my pen tool,  so the Peaky, and I'm going to draw something that kind  of goes, I'm clicking and dragging out to get a curve. Okay? It's gonna go like this  and then maybe something,  actually I need the path down there  and then something like that. Okay?

Escape when you're finished a couple of times  I'm going to move this on mainly  'cause it's gonna expose uh,  an issue that we might run into. Okay? So we've got the shape and we've got the line. We need to find the plugin. The plugin we want's called motion. Like there's lots of different plugins.

Motion's probably the most robust. It's really good. But again, animation  and Figma is just, I dunno, it's not what it's made for,  but everyone keeps asking me how to do animation on a path  and we can kind of do it. So what we need to do is be able to zoom out  and kind of be able to see both of them. Okay? A little bit of jiggling around.

Now I want to select on my, it's called uh, subtract. Okay, subtract is Pacman. Actually let's rename it over here. Pacman. And for some reason it doesn't update in this,  but if I close it, reopen it. There it is.

Pacman. Now if you've done timeline animation  before, you'd be like hey, this looks awesome. And it is okay. It's very much like Adobe aate After  Effects, premiere Pro, any sort of timeline,  key frame animation tool. So we're not gonna go into like too much depth here,  but for those people and there's a lot of us who know how  to use the basics of those. Motion is a great step.

We'll just do something basic together to get something made  but also to see where all the problems lie. Kinda an education process. Now this will change over time as Figma evolves,  but for the moment let's run into those issues. So what I wanna do is, I wanna say Pacman, I would like  to, can you see this option here? X and Y. All three of these are linked.

So I can say you pick any one of them. It says pick a path, uh, that path  and click okay and it's gonna kind of work. See my guy there, he kind of worked kind of well. Kinda got stuck there. Yep. It's kind of working.

If yours is the same, the reason this isn't working is  because my vector is outside the frame that I'm working on. If they're both inside  or both outside of it, it doesn't matter. Okay? That's what it needs. Then  they'll be able to connect up. Cool.

Um, there you go. We've got a bit of animation. What's so wrong Dan? Uh, nothing wrong  except let's click on Pacman. Let's click on these. First of all,  the easing needs to be linear.

Let's go to in and out and let's do  some adjustments for the time. Okay? So I'm gonna click on PackMan here. I'm gonna go to the top. I'm gonna type in,  you can't type in one second. If you do, just put some point ones.

I'm gonna say one s for a second. I'm gonna get my workspace to kind of drag it down  so it snaps to the edge so that it doesn't,  so it just plays in that little loop. Nice. Alright. The strange thing about Figma now is that it won't allow you  to just keep that there. Like I can see it playing.

Why can't I just have the animation? Just like throw it into a instance or a component. I can move it around and it'll play  on its own much like a video. It's not how it works. If I close this down now  and preview it, so have a look, doesn't do anything. This may change in the future at the moment  it can't make this happen.

I can export it and bring it back in. So that's what we're gonna do. But it can't, it doesn't know  what doula stuff the plugin does,  but my prototype mode can't kind  of take this information  and port it through to our prototype. That's the kind of biggest limitation at the moment. So how do we get round it? Couple of things.

One is let's export it and re-import it again. So you've got some varying export options. The one that I want is probably SVG. 'cause you can animate SVGs now so the vector will be there. Unfortunately that doesn't work. You can't import that into uh, figure at the moment.

It just lumps in a big animated version. And this one here, dev. Okay, this one here is a JSO file. And I like JSO  'cause we can turn it into a Lotty file,  which you might not know about now,  but unfortunately we end up at a dead end there as well  because at the moment Figma can't import a Lottie  file or a JSO file. What you could do now is get the animation going,  not prototype it and send this JSO file, okay? To your developer, okay?

They'll be able to implement it, okay? That might be the workaround for you. You can't see it in Figma  or at least you can't see this JS O file. But you can send this to your developer  to get made into an animation. Alright? But say we wanna see this in here  because we wanna prototype it.

It's part of what we're doing. Okay? So there is an option in here called gif. We all know what an animated GIF is, okay? Uh, I'm gonna leave it all as default,  I'm gonna export it, okay? And we get it there it goes chugging through  and this will work to a degree.

Okay? So I'm putting mine in my junk drawer,  I'm gonna leave it badly named. Let's export one more version like the video  because we are like, oh just use the video. Unfortunately it exports as an MP four. MP fours are great, they just don't have transparency. So I can't kind of like use it on top of stuff.

It makes a big solid lump  of a file that I can't see through. So have a look. So I've got those two files. Let's have a look at both of them. So I got my gif. There he is.

Excellent. And let's have a look at the MP four. So that works as well. A GIF can have transparency and MP four can't. So I want the GIF 'cause they look fine. It's a little pixelated but we can get around that.

So what we want to do is I wanna do a couple of things. I don't wanna see the line and we can do that  by finding the vector and just turning the stroke down  to 0%. Okay, that'll work. And it actually exported  the background of this. So what I might do is actually grab this  and the vector, drag it out, okay,  you can't see it but there it is there. We'll go to outline mode.

Member shifto. Okay, um, I'm gonna select both of these. Okay? And I'm gonna open up the plugin again. I'm using the shortcut command option P to open it up  for the uh, plugin that you've used last or,  or control Alt P. You see that shortcut yet?

Uh, I'm gonna try and export it. It's gonna say I need  a frame so I can do that. Okay, I've got these both selected. I'm gonna put them in a frame. I'm gonna name that frame bit better. I'm gonna call it Pacman and now I'm gonna export it.

Okay, I'm gonna export the gif. Best quality high quality frames per second. I think you need the paid version to go up  to the higher frames per second. But hey, it's gonna work. Alright, Pacman gif, let's replace, I made one earlier  and let's look at Pacman gif. You go.

He is got transparency. The quality for a gif is always not great. You can switch it from best to high quality. But now gifs are one of the files  that I'm gonna close all this down that Figma can use. So we're gonna put that in somewhere. I'm gonna make sure it's inside of my frame.

Okay? Kind of starts there and kind of whizzes around. I'm gonna get 'em to kind of end there. Let's preview it now. There you go. There's my little animation refresh.

He cuts out the bottom. Okay, it's  because that, let's look at Pacman. Can you see my path kind of gets right to the edge here. So I'm gonna have to make my frame not the vector,  the frame Pacman bigger just to accommodate Pacman  as he goes around on his little vector path there. Is that enough? Probably enough.

There you go. You can get him to animate on a path. At the moment it's only a gif if there's a new version  or I just don't know of a way of doing it. I really want vector 'cause gif are the  animations aren't great. Where is my guy there? And  there's just a few things to remember.

When you are creating it in motion, make sure  that both the uh, the path  and the object are inside the frame. You can turn the opacity down  on the stroke that it's following. And if you want it to be transparent, just put it in a frame  that has enough space around the edges  for our little Pacman guide to not get cut off. Then bring in that gif once you've done it  and you might sell that into the client or to your team. Okay? Then you can use motion.

Figure out what the team wants. Do they want animated SVGs which are good  but quite limited in what they can actually like accomplish. If it's simple vector stuff, it might be fine. Okay? But also it might be animated CSS. You can do basic stuff with them as well at the moment  for me and my knowledge, okay,  A-J-S-O-N file is probably the best,  most robust implementation.

It keeps a vector. You can actually end up controlling this  animation in code. It's not kind of like, uh, like the gif where it's kind  of made and you can't change it ever. You can actually control stuff inside. You could change the colors of the pacman. You could change sizes.

That's all done in code afterwards. Could be some dynamic cool stuff going on your website. I think the biggest takeaway is  that animation in Figma at the moment is  not what it's made for. It's about rapid prototyping,  but as it matures I'm sure it'll  introduce lots of other features. I'm hoping JSON  and maybe something called Lotti will come into it soon  and maybe animated SVGs. That'd be awesome.

Alright, that is it. Animating our Pac-Man on a path in Figma. See you in the next video. And actually  before we go, uh,  a little sign off from my son who's been home all day,  who's sick, sick for the first like two seconds. Turns out now he's just being annoying all day. Uh, take it away.

Finish finish off the video. Is she,  Um, hello? Um, my name is I  for the first two minutes and now I dunno what we're doing. So goodbye. I mean, see you the next video. Goodbye.

There  You go. That's what I'm trying  to work with people. Yeah, see you the next video. Bye. Goodbye.