A beginner's guide to the Rive State Machine

State machines can seem intimidating at first. The name alone sounds like something pulled from the novel 1984 or Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner. 

But designers, you already think in state machines. You do it whenever you design a hover effect, a pressed state, or an animated flow from one screen to another. And developers? You rebuild them. In most workflows, state machines are disconnected. Designs are documented, handed off to a developer, and then rebuilt in code. 

Rive makes that handoff unnecessary. It gives designers a visual way to build the logic behind motion, complete with states, transitions, and inputs, all inside the same tool where they design and animate.

Let’s get into it. 

What’s a state machine, really?

In Rive, a state machine is a visual way to connect animations and define the logic that drives the transitions. Think of it like a decision-maker that chooses the right state (and animation) based on what’s happening. 

A “state” is usually a timeline animation (like “Idle” or “Pressed”), but it can also be a blend of animations or a placeholder state like “Exit.” You wire those states together with transitions, then connect them to logic using Data Binding, so the right animation plays at the right time and is in sync with the data and user interaction. 

Rive also supports Listeners, which let you trigger logic inside a state machine when certain transitions happen. For example, you can attach Pointer Enter, Pointer Exit, and Click listeners to a button. When triggered, these listeners can update data bindings, set inputs, and fire events. 

So when someone clicks a button, scrolls a page, hovers with their mouse, or loads new data, your Rive file can respond dynamically.

Summary: State machines let you wire logic directly into your animations, so your design can react in real time to user input.

Managing state machines across multiple artboards

Artboards are self-contained workspaces. Each artboard holds its own artwork, animation, and state machine. You can have multiple artboards in a single Rive file. This makes it easy to modularize your design.

Let’s say you’ve built a custom toggle switch, a tabbed menu, and an animated mascot. Each one lives on its own artboard, with its own logic and animations. This separation helps you stay organized and reuse components across projects. 

If the mascot should wave when a user selects a tab, you can use Data Binding to connect that event to the mascot’s state machine. Data Binding makes it easy to map live data (like user selections, API responses, or internal app logic) to your Rive file. This keeps motion in sync with everything else happening in your product.

Summary: Each artboard can have its own state machine, helping you modularize logic and keep components clean, organized, and reusable.

How Rive responds to data updates at runtime

Rive doesn’t handle data fetching or async logic directly. Instead, it reacts to changes in the data you bind to it. 

When new data arrives, like updated content, a completed action, or a delayed API response, Data Binding updates your animation automatically. State changes trigger transitions, and you can make those transitions feel smooth with blends, delays, or intermediate states. 

Rive doesn’t block while it waits for data, like a poll result or live odds. When the bound value updates, the correct transition fires. Meanwhile, the rest of the state machine keeps humming. 

Summary: Rive animations respond instantly to data changes, so you can build seamless transitions and update animations as soon as new data arrives.

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Want to see it in action? Open the Rive Editor and start wiring things together, or check out the State Machine docs for real examples in motion.