guard self.window != nil prevents layer animation from playing

[jeffepic]

This issue is a:

• [] Non-Crashing Bug (Visual or otherwise)

Which Version of Lottie are you using?

Lottie 3.1.2

What Platform are you on?

• iOS

What Language are you in?

• Swift

Expected Behavior

Actual Behavior

Code Example

Adding an AnimationView's layer to another CALayer, the animation will never play because of this line in AnimationView.swift:
guard self.window != nil else { waitingToPlayAimation = true; return }

If I comment that out, it works as expected. The reason is that I am not adding the AnimationView to the view hierarchy, and therefore its window is nil. Layer does not have a window property.

works:
view.addSubview(lottieView)

does not work:
customLayer.addSublayer(lottieView.layer)

I think I understand the purpose of that line, you don't want it playing if it isn't on the screen, but maybe an option could be added for layer animations to bypass that?

[damikdk]

I spent days trying to export CALayer without real UIView rendered on the screen (through AVMutableVideoComposition and AVAssetExportSession) and I got the same results. This line really ruin the coolest way to export animations.

[croossin]

I am also seeing this issue... even when adding an AnimationView directly to the .xib...

[ole-kr-stumpf]

I had this issue, and I resolved it by moving the initialisation of AnimationView, i.e. let animationView = AnimationView() to inside of makeUIView.
Also, this was an issue only on iOS v. 14.1, but not on 14.2

[devmea]

Using version 3.1.5 and came across this issue.
I have a collectionView with several AnimationViews, and it works the first time I scroll down. When I scroll back up, and I instantiate a new AnimationView, its window is returning nil.

Edit: updated to 3.3.0 and issue persists.

[calda]

Adding an AnimationView's layer to another CALayer

Closing since I don't think this is a supported way to use a UIView subclass