RIVE crash course for beginners: How to animate Figma designs for Webflow

Dive into one free basic course on Rive one — from importing your Figma files to creating clean artboards to loop animations and exporting to Webflow or GSAP. You will learn how to avoid clipping mask errors, rotate icons independently and integrate animations with high performance. After these basics, you have the complete workflow to bring interactive SVG animations to your web projects.

Your kick start in Rive: How to animate Figma designs without code

Why Rive for web designers?

Rive combined Vector power with a timeline that is reminiscent of After Effects, but remains interactive and tiny in file size. This makes Rive ideal if you want to control animations directly in Webflow or via GSAP.

Figma preparation: Clean artboards are worth their weight in gold

Before you start, create an art board that exactly depicts your future animation area. copy invariably The entire artboard as SVG, never individual elements — this way you avoid slipping positions and ensure consistent sizes.

Getting started with Rive

• Design fashion vs. animate mode: Stay in design mode for now, place all elements, delete unwanted clipping masks and set the background correctly.
• Rotation & anchor point: With Y key Set the anchor point and add 360 degree rotation via keyframe.
• Activate loop: Save time by setting the timeline to Loop Set — perfect for endless loops.

Using constraints correctly

Link icons via Target Constraint with the rotating circle and set Strength to —100%. As a result, every icon remains readable while the background rotates. If you change the duration later, everything is automatically adjusted.

Exporting to Webflow & GSAP

• Export.riv file and upload to Webflow.
• layout option Contain Keep your graphics responsive
• For more complex interactions, you can trigger the animation via GSAP and even control multiple artboards or state machines.

Performance best practices

• Avoid bitmap images wherever possible.
• Keep the timeline streamlined — a clean loop animation with just a few keyframes is usually enough.
• Test the file size: Rive files often stay under 5 KB.

Conclusion & call-to-action

With these basics, you can create responsive SVG animations in minutes that bring your Webflow sites to life. Try Rive now in my free basic course and take your next projects to the next level!