Polymation docs

Polymation gives your AI assistant (Claude, Cursor, VS Code and other MCP apps) the tools to make, convert and check animation files: Rive, Lottie, Spline, Figma, After Effects and more. You say what you want in plain words, and your assistant does the steps. Each guide here covers one job: what you bring, what to ask, and what you get back.

Set up

The download page has every install route. In short:

  • Claude Desktop, one click: install rivemcp.mcpb as an extension. It covers drawing, animation, state machines, conversion and previews. The jobs that read pictures and video need the npm install below: sprite sheets, video clips, background removal, cutting a character into parts, PSDs, animated stills, automatic meshes and 3D from a picture. Assembling a flipbook or a rig from PNGs you already have works in the extension.
  • Any MCP app (Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, VS Code, Claude Desktop by hand): run the server with npx -y rivemcp. In Claude Code that is one command: 
    claude mcp add rivemcp -- npx -y rivemcp
  • Your licence key goes in the POLYMATION_LICENSE_KEY environment variable of the server. Without one, the free trial gives you 3 finished files.

What the trial counts. Anything that writes a file you keep: an exported Rive file, a conversion, a flipbook, a rigged character, a pixel puppet, a web player page. Previews, briefs, checks and dry runs are free.

Previews and GIFs are drawn in Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge, so with either installed there is nothing more to set up. A few tools build with Rive's own command-line tool and say so when it is missing: live pixel puppets, shader effects and AnimaScript.

Optional, agent skills: npx skills add paradoxsyn/rivemcp-releases adds step-by-step instructions for eight jobs to assistants that read skills, such as Claude Code. They help an assistant get each job right the first time.

How working with it goes

  1. Say the job and where your files are. "Turn ~/clips/walk.mp4 into a sprite sheet in ~/game/sprites." Your assistant finds the right tools itself. If it says something can't be done, ask it to search Polymation's tools first: there are over 200.
  2. Bring the art; Polymation never calls an AI model. For characters and painted scenes, it writes the prompt and a guide picture for your own image or video model (ChatGPT, Gemini, Veo, Sora, Kling and others). You run it there and give the result back. Polymation never sends your pictures anywhere, and there are no AI credits to buy from us.
  3. Look at the result. Your assistant can render any file, as a frame, a GIF or a video, in Rive's own runtime. Ask it to show you before you call it done.
  4. Save as you go. Work in progress lives in the session, in memory. Ask your assistant to export the file, or to save a checkpoint before a big change. A restarted app starts a new session.

Pick a guide

Make from scratch

Logos, icons and shapesLoaders, logo reveals, icon motion, text effects and physics, drawn and keyed by your assistant in a Rive file. Buttons and interactive filesHover, press and tap reactions, ready-made UI components, state machines and view models your app sets, each tested in Rive's own runtime.

Bring work in

Convert other formatsLottie, dotLottie, After Effects, Adobe Animate, Figma, Spline, Spine and 3D models into Rive, and Rive back out, with a report of everything the conversion decided. Spine in and outBring a Spine skeleton into Rive (and on to Lottie, Spline or Figma) with its bones, meshes, skins and animations, or export any Rive file as a Spine skeleton every Spine runtime plays. Edit a file you haveOpen a .riv or .rev, see what is inside, change it, add to it, and save it, including new art drawn into the scene by your image model.

Characters

Video clip to sprite animationA clip from your video model, or frames from your image model, become a clean looping flipbook, a sprite sheet for your game engine and a Rive file, with one-shot moves and eight facings. Rig a character from a pictureOne picture, a layered PSD or a parts sheet becomes a rigged Rive character with bones, bending meshes and an idle; walk frames become one rig with bone keyframes. Animate your rig from a videoYour video model, or any footage, provides the motion; your rigged character keeps its own art. Works on parts from a picture or PSD, and on characters rigged in Rive. Eight-way charactersOne file that turns your character to face 4, 8 or 16 directions: from drawn facings, from a rig per facing, or rendered from a 3D model. Fix AI pixel artPixel art from an image model snapped onto a true grid: even blocks, a real palette, clean edges, and whole sets of frames or items on one shared grid. Animate a pixel characterA pixel-art character or animal rigged and animated from a built-in library (idle, walk, run, wave, sit and more), with outfits, expressions and body types, crisp in its own colours.

Scenes and effects

Paint a blocked-out sceneNo art yet? Your assistant blocks the scene out with named shapes and animates it; your image model paints it; the painting goes back onto the same objects with the motion kept. In 3D, your generated models are placed in the scene. Parallax and 3D from a pictureOne picture becomes a parallax scene in Rive, a 3D diorama in Spline, or a 3D figure that turns and walks; plus 3D scenes built from a description. Effects and scriptsSmoke, fire and glow on a still picture; GPU shader effects such as glow, outline and dissolve; soft glows and shadows; and scripted drawing with AnimaScript.

Finish

Preview, check and shareSee a file as a frame, GIF or MP4 in Rive's own runtime, check how its motion reads, prove its interactions work, and share a web page that plays it.

When something goes wrong

If a tool fails, gives a plainly wrong result, or nothing fits your job, your assistant can offer to send us a problem report with report_problem. You see the exact report first, and it is sent only if you say yes. File paths and licence keys are taken out, and so are email addresses unless you add one so we can reply. You can also ask in our Discord. Lost your key? Get it emailed to you.