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Artboards are the foundation of your composition across both Design and Animate mode. Each artboard defines a scene with its own dimensions, background, hierarchy, animations, and state machines. Every Rive file contains at least one artboard, but you can create any number of artboards on the Stage. Artboards can also be converted to components, allowing you to create and control multiple instances of an artboard within your composition.

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Creating Artboards

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From a New Rive File

When you create a new Rive file, you’ll be prompted to create an artboard. Choose a size from one of the presets, or enter a custom width and height. You can resize the artboard at any time. The width and height define the artboard’s dimensions in Rive. The size and aspect ratio at runtime may differ depending on the available space and your layout settings.
Artboard dimensions are measured in units rather than pixels. For example, if a 500-unit-wide artboard is displayed at 1000 pixels wide, each unit represents 2 pixels. For simplicity, you can often treat these units like pixels while working in the editor.

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Creating Additional Artboards

A Rive file can contain multiple artboards.
1
Select the Artboard Tool or press A.
2
Click and drag anywhere on the stage to create an artboard.
Artboards can’t be nested directly inside other artboards. To nest an artboard, first convert it to a component.

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Copying Artboards

Select an artboard and press Cmd/Ctrl + D to duplicate the artboard and all of its contents.

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Managing Artboards

Each artboard has its own hierarchy, animations, state machines, and properties.

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Hierarchy

Each artboard has its own hierarchy containing the objects that belong to that artboard. Select an artboard to view its hierarchy in the Hierarchy panel. See Hierarchy for more information about organizing and navigating objects.

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Animations & State Machines

Animations and state machines belong to individual artboards. Select an artboard to view and edit its animations and state machines. See Animations and State Machines to learn more.

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Artboard Properties

Select an artboard to view and edit its properties in the Inspector.
  • Transform - Set the artboard’s position, size, scale, rotation, and origin.
  • Layout - Control how the artboard responds when its size changes. See Layout.
  • Fill - Set the artboard’s background color.
  • Model - Choose the view model associated with the artboard.
  • Clip - Control whether content outside the artboard’s bounds is visible.

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Clip

Enabling the Clip toggle hides content that extends beyond the bounds of the artboard.
Clipping can be expensive to render, so only enable it when needed.
In most cases, you don’t need to enable Clip on a top-level artboard because content outside its bounds isn’t rendered at runtime.

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Default Artboard & State Machine

The default artboard and state machine are used at runtime when an artboard or state machine isn’t explicitly specified. To change the default, use the dropdown to select the artboard and state machine you want to use.