---
title: "What players draw"
description: "Choose between editable animation instructions and rendered pictures when delivering your work."
canonical: "https://terminal.lottiefiles.com/docs/concepts/what-players-draw/"
last_updated: 2026-10-28
---

# What players draw

Choose between editable animation instructions and rendered pictures when delivering your work.

## Players interpret the animation

Lottie JSON and dotLottie describe layers, shapes, keys and other animation data. A player
draws the features it supports. dotLottie also packages media, themes and state machines;
the destination player must support the features you use.

Materials, Ink and Soft are kept in the document (`.ctd`), not in Lottie or dotLottie: players
draw the plain layers, and a Lottie opened again has them plain. Check the plain drawing if
you plan to deliver one of those formats.

[Watch: What players draw](https://terminal.lottiefiles.com/players/).

## Pictures carry the rendered appearance

Video, GIF, WebP, APNG and PNG frames record the appearance frame by frame. They draw
materials when suitable graphics hardware is available. They do not let the
destination change your layers, tokens or state machine at runtime.

Motion blur is drawn in these pictures. In Lottie, dotLottie, Frolic and SVG, it is baked as
a blur along the move. Baking can change the delivery's size and how the destination draws it.

## Fonts and letters serve different jobs

Glyphs carry the letter shapes used by the animation. Whole fonts let an editor create new
letters later. **Glyphs** leaves whole fonts out where glyphs can replace them;
**Glyphs + fonts** includes fonts for editing. A font without glyphs retains its font file or
reference so its text can draw. Your working document keeps its fonts when saved.

## Check the actual destination

The stage uses ThorVG. A destination may have different support for effects, text, themes,
state machines or transparency. Read export warnings, then test the exported file in that
destination. Reopening it in Creator Terminal checks that it opens here; it does not check
every other player.

See [Export](https://terminal.lottiefiles.com/docs/export.md) for SVG and Frolic's limits and each format's transparency.