animejs provides R bindings to Anime.js v4, a JavaScript animation library. It produces self-contained HTML widgets via htmlwidgets that render in browser environments like RStudio Viewer, R Markdown documents, Quarto reports, and Shiny applications.

Installation

You can install the released version of animejs from CRAN:

install.packages("animejs")

Or install the development version of animejs from GitHub with:

# install.packages("pak")
pak::pak("long39ng/animejs")

Usage

Annotate SVG elements with a data-animejs-id attribute or a CSS class, then build a timeline in R and render it as a widget.

library(animejs)
svg_src <- '
<svg viewBox="0 0 400 200" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg">
  <circle data-animejs-id="c1" cx="50"  cy="100" r="20" fill="#4e79a7"/>
  <circle data-animejs-id="c2" cx="120" cy="100" r="20" fill="#f28e2b"/>
  <circle data-animejs-id="c3" cx="190" cy="100" r="20" fill="#e15759"/>
</svg>
'
anime_timeline(
  duration = 800,
  ease = anime_easing_elastic(),
  loop = TRUE
) |>
  anime_add(
    selector = anime_target_css("circle"),
    props = list(
      translateY = anime_from_to(-80, 0),
      opacity = anime_from_to(0, 1)
    ),
    stagger = anime_stagger(150, from = "first")
  ) |>
  anime_add(
    selector = anime_target_id("c2"),
    props = list(r = anime_from_to(20, 40)),
    offset = "+=200"
  ) |>
  anime_render(svg = svg_src)

Three circles animating into view with a staggered elastic entrance, followed by the middle circle expanding.

Key concepts

Animations. anime_animate() creates a single animation, mirroring Anime.js v4’s animate(). anime_timeline() initialises a timeline with default duration, ease, and delay; anime_add() appends animation segments to it.

Properties. anime_from_to() describes a two-value transition; anime_keyframes() describes a multi-step sequence. Both are passed inside the props list of anime_add() or anime_animate().

Stagger. anime_stagger() distributes animation start times across the elements matched by a selector. Supports linear, centre-out, and 2-D grid distributions.

Easing. All easing constructors return anime_easing objects mapped onto their Anime.js v4 equivalents. Parameterised families – anime_easing_elastic(), anime_easing_spring(), anime_easing_bezier(), anime_easing_steps(), anime_easing_back() – are also available.

Playback. anime_playback() controls looping, direction, speed, and an optional play/pause/scrub control bar injected into the widget.

Shiny. animejsOutput() and renderAnimejs() embed widgets in Shiny applications.