A framework to work with lottie / tgs files
Project description
Telegram Animated Stickers Tools
A Python framework to work with Telegram animated stickers.
Scripts
-
bin/tgsconvert.py
Script that can convert between several formats, including lottie / TGS
-
bin/tgscat.py
Prints the given tgs / lottie file into a human-readable format
-
bin/tgsdiff.py
Shows a side-by-side diff of the human-readable rendition of two tgs / lottie files
-
bin/tgs2svg.py
Extracts a frame as SVG from a lottie/tgs file, has a couple more options than
bin/tgsconvert.py
-
bin/raster2tgs.py
Converts a sequence of raster images into a lottie/tgs file, has a couple more options than
bin/tgsconvert.py
-
bin/raster_palette.py
Shows the palette of a raster image, to use with
bin/raster2tgs.py
-
bin/tgscolor.py
Converts a CSS color into a normalized array, as used in lottie
-
bin/jsoncat.py
Pretty prints a JSON file (useful to debug / diff lottie files)
-
bin/jsondiff.py
Pretty prints two JSON files side by side, highlighting differences (useful to debug / diff lottie files)
-
bin/tgscat.py
Pretty prints a tgs / lottie file with more readable annotations (useful to debug / diff lottie files)
-
bin/tgsdiff.py
Pretty prints two tgs / lottie files side by side, highlighting differences (useful to debug / diff lottie files)
-
bin/tgscheck.py
Checks a lottie or tgs file to see if it's compatible with telegram stickers
Installation
Synfig
There's a Synfig studio plugin to export telegram stickers. To install, just copy (or symlink) ./addons/synfig/tgs-exporter into the synfig plugin directory. You might have to copy ./lib/tgs in there as well.
You can download a zipfile from http://mattia.basaglia.gitlab.io/tgs/downloads.html
Inkscape
There are some import/export extensions for inkscape.
Just copy (or symlink) the files under ./addons/inkscape to the inkscape extension directory. On my system that's ~/.config/inkscape/extensions/ but you can double check from Inkscape: Edit > Preferences... > System > User extensions
Note that the extensions require Python 3.
If they are run with a python 2 interpreter, they will try to run themselves using python3
.
They also need the tgs framework to be in the python path, otherwise you can manually set the path on the import/export dialogues.
See also https://inkscape.org/~mattia.basaglia/%E2%98%85tgslottie-importexport
You can download a zipfile from http://mattia.basaglia.gitlab.io/tgs/downloads.html
Blender
There are some export addons for blender.
Copy (or symlink) the files under ./addons/blender to the Blender extension directory.
On my system that's ~/.config/blender/2.80/scripts/addons/ you can check available paths through the Blender Python console:
import addon_utils; print(addon_utils.paths())
You can also install the addon from Blender using the zipfile created by make
.
You can download a zipfile from http://mattia.basaglia.gitlab.io/tgs/downloads.html
Pip
You can install from pypi:
pip install tgs
from git:
pip install git+https://gitlab.com/mattia.basaglia/tgs.git@master
for the source directory:
pip install /path/to/the/sources # this is the path where setup.py is located
Requirements
Python 3.
Optional Requirements
coverage
To show unit test coverage, used optionally bytest.sh
pillow
,pypotrace>=0.2
,numpy
,scipy
To convert raster images into vectorspillow
To load image assetscairosvg
To export PNG / PDF / PScairosvg
,pillow
To export GIFcairosvg
,numpy
, Python OpenCV 2 To export videofonttools
To render text as shapes
Features
Here is a list of features of the tgs python framework:
- Loading compressed TGS and uncompressed lottie JSON
- Importing SVG images
- Importing raster images and convert them into vectors
- Export lottie JSON or TGS
- Export (non-animated) SVG
- Export Synfig files
- Export PNG/PDF/PostScript
- Export GIF
- Export Video (MP4, AVI, WebM)
- Manipulation of lottie objects
- Simple animation presets (eg: shake, linear bounce)
- Bezier path animations (eg: follow path, making paths appear and disappear)
- Wave distortion animation (eg: for flags)
- Pseudo-3D rotations
- Animation easing functions
- Inverse Kinematic solver
- Pretty printing and comparison of lottie files
- Rendering text as shapes
Reverse Engineering
I had to reverse engineer the format because Telegram couldn't be bothered providing the specs.
A TGS file is a gzip compressed JSON, the JSON data is described here: https://mattia.basaglia.gitlab.io/tgs/group__Lottie.html#lottie_json
Making your own exporters converters
Lottie format
If you can get the source image into lottie format, that's 90% of the work done.
I've created Python classes based the format schema and after effects documentation, which output the correct json. Eg:
foo = tgs.Animation()
# ...
json.dump(foo.to_dict(), output_file)
I'm also creating a proper documentation for the format, see: https://mattia.basaglia.gitlab.io/tgs/group__Lottie.html#details
TGS changes
Nothing major, just ensure the root JSON object has tgs: 1
Gzipping
The tgs file is the JSON described above compressed into a gzip, and renamed to .tgs
Unsupported features
Telegram doesn't support everything in the Lottie format. https://core.telegram.org/animated_stickers lists some things that are unsupported but what is listed there isn't correct.
There are several things marked as unsupported in telegram animated stickers that are actually supported:
- Masks
- Mattes (Works on desktop but not on Android)
- Star Shapes
- Gradient Strokes
- Repeaters
- Solids
The following things are actually unsupported:
- Layer Effects
- Images
- Skew transforms (this isn't listed in the unsupported features)
- Texts
- Animated layer transforms (not listed as unsupported)
Things marked as unsupported that I haven't tested:
- Expressions
- 3D Layers
- Merge Paths
- Time Stretching
- Time Remapping
- Auto-Oriented Layers
License
AGPLv3+ https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.en.html
Credits
Copyright 2019 (C) Mattia Basaglia
Links
Documentation
http://mattia.basaglia.gitlab.io/tgs/index.html
Code
https://gitlab.com/mattia.basaglia/tgs/
Chat
Download
https://gitlab.com/mattia.basaglia/tgs/-/jobs/artifacts/master/download?job=build
Here you can download packages for pip, blender, and inkscape before they are released. These packages always have the latest features but they might be unstable.
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