New: Smart Animate — Bring movement to your prototypes. Learn more

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Documentation Prototyping Adding animations

Adding animations

Last updated on 17 Sep 2024
2 min read

Animations help define how interactions in your design should feel and create smooth and realistic transitions between Artboards.

Types of animation

There are four types of animations to choose from:

  • Instant. This transition immediately jumps to the target Artboard and has no easing or duration options.

  • Slide. This transition slides one Artboard over another.

  • Dissolve. Gives a crossfade effect between two Artboards, and is a great transition when you’re looking for something simple with no movement.

  • Smart Animate. Automatically animates changes in the position, size, rotation or shape of layers with matching names.

How to set up an animation

  1. Create an interaction between two Artboards or a layer and an Artboard.
  2. In the Prototype tab, head to Animation in the Interaction section. Choose between Instant, Dissolve, Smart Animate or Slide.

How to set up Smart Animate

Just like with the rest of animations, to set up Smart Animate, head to the Prototype tab in the Inspector and select Smart Animate in the Animation dropdown. You can apply Smart Animate on properties like: position, shape or size.

However, there are a few other things to keep in mind when setting up Smart Animate:

  • Ensure that the layers you want to animate are inside an Artboard.
  • Make sure both layers you want to animate share the same name and type. Smart Animate will recognize the changes in properties between these layers on both Artboards and animate them automatically.
  • If there are changes in color, blending modes, or filters (such as shadows or blurs) alongside changes in position, shape, or size, Sketch will automatically apply a dissolve animation to the former and keep Smart Animate for changes in position, shape, or size.
  • Unfortunately, you can’t apply Smart Animate to paths, borders, shapes with different amount of vector points, type, gradients or Overlays.

Easing, duration and direction

For Instant, Slide and Smart Animate animations you can customize: Easing. Control the speed of the animation to create a more realistic transition. With easing you can create effects like starting slowly, speeding up, and then slowing down again. You can choose between different types of easing:

  • Linear: The animation will progress at a constant speed from start to finish.

  • Ease In: The animation will start slowly, accelerate towards the end and come to a sudden stop.

  • Ease Out: The animation will start quickly, decelerate towards the end and come to a gradual stop.

  • Ease In and Out: The animation will start slowly, accelerate in the middle, and slow down towards the end.

  • Ease In Back/Ease Out back/Ease In and Out back: Once the animation goes past its target, it’ll then bounce back into place.

Duration. Choose how long you want the animation to take from start to finish.

If you’re using a Slide animation, you can choose which direction your Artboard will slide from. You’ll find it in the Direction section under Animation.