Vector Feathering

Vector Feathering is a technique we invented at Rive that can soften the edge of vector paths without the typical performance impact of traditional blur effects.

How does it work?

It can be enabled on any Fill or Stroke. It requires a new Fill Rule, called Clockwise, which is part of how this new invention works. We’ll have dedicated content on the Clockwise Fill Rule soon; for now, make sure you enable it if you want to use Vector Feathering.

Once you’ve enabled the new Fill Rule, you can change feathering properties like Amount, Offset, and Inner to create different types of shadows, glows, and lighting effects.

Switch your Space from Local to World to ensure the orientation of your Offset properties isn’t affected by transformations (like rotation and scale).

Where is it supported?

Vector Feathering is available today in the Rive Editor for Mac and Windows desktop. It also works in our web editor, though you'll get the best possible quality if you use Chrome and enable WebGL draft extensions:

1. Open Google Chrome

2. In the address bar, type chrome://flags

3. Search for "Draft Extensions"

4. Find the "WebGL Draft Extensions" option

5. Select "Enabled" from the dropdown menu

6. Relaunch Google Chrome

Why release now?

Many of you have been asking for glows/shadows/blurs for a long time. The reason we've been holding off is that Rive is all about creating graphics that run in production software, not just mockups or prototypes that run in a controlled sandbox.

We knew that adding traditional blur effects to create glows/shadows would make it difficult to guarantee great performance across various platforms and hardware.

Vector Feathering is possible now thanks to our breakthroughs with the Rive Renderer. The same rendering algorithm that makes it possible to render paths and text insanely fast is what powers Vector Feathering.

It’s not quite the same as a traditional blur, but it unlocks the ability to create a new style of vector graphics — with depth and lighting — that is still infinitely scalable and hyper-performant on lower-end hardware.