Try .riv files in the Rive Qt viewer

The plugin repository comes with a viewer: a small Qt Quick app built on RiveView that opens any .riv and puts every control the plugin has on screen. Use it to check that a file from the Rive editor plays the way you expect in Qt before you wire it into your app, and to see which artboard, state machine and view model names to use from QML.

Build it

You need the same toolchain as the plugin: Qt 6.5 or later, CMake 3.21+, Ninja and a C++20 compiler (see requirements).

git clone --recursive https://github.com/hypernuclear/rive-qt-plugin.git
cd rive-qt-plugin
cmake --preset default -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=/path/to/Qt/6.12.0/macos
cmake --build --preset viewer
./build/examples/viewer/rive_viewer

Point CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH at your Qt kit (for example ~/Qt/6.12.0/gcc_64 on Linux or C:/Qt/6.12.0/msvc2022_64 on Windows). On Windows, run the commands from a Developer PowerShell for Visual Studio and start build\examples\viewer\rive_viewer.exe.

The first configure takes a minute or two while it builds the Rive runtime; after that, rebuilds are quick. The default preset is a debug build. For smoother playback of heavy files, configure with cmake --preset release instead, then build the same way.

Open your files

• Samples. The Sample menu lists every .riv in examples/viewer/samples/. Drop your own exports into that folder and click Refresh; no rebuild needed.
• Any path or URL. Paste a file:///… path or an https://… link to a .riv into the URL field and press Load.

If a file can’t be loaded, the status line at the bottom says why.

What you can do

• Pick what plays. Choose the artboard, state machine, view model and view model instance. Leave them on (default) to see what RiveView picks on its own.
• Play, pause and change speed, from frozen to double speed.
• Scrub a timeline. Set Mode to Animation, choose an animation, and drag the scrubber frame by frame. The readout shows the frame, the time and the animation’s frame rate. In Auto mode a file with a state machine runs the state machine, which has no single timeline to scrub.
• Edit view model properties live. The View Model tab lists every property of the bound instance with an editor for its type: switches for booleans, fields for numbers and strings, a color picker, enum menus, a Fire button for triggers, image replacement from disk, artboard swaps, and nested view models and lists you can open.
• Try layouts. The Layout tab sets the fit and alignment and can override the layout size, for artboards that use Rive’s layout system.
• Interact. Click, drag and touch go to the state machine’s listeners. Click into the view to give it keyboard focus, then use Tab and the arrow keys to move through the artboard.

Every control maps to a RiveView property or method, so the QML API reference is the guide to doing the same thing in your app.

Compare graphics backends

The viewer uses whichever graphics API Qt picks for the window. To try another, set QSG_RHI_BACKEND before launching:

QSG_RHI_BACKEND=vulkan ./build/examples/viewer/rive_viewer

Platform	Values
macOS	metal (default); vulkan with a Vulkan-enabled Qt and MoltenVK
Windows	d3d11 (default), d3d12, opengl, vulkan
Linux	opengl (default), vulkan

Vulkan and Direct3D 12 have to be enabled at build time (build options). In PowerShell, set the variable with $env:QSG_RHI_BACKEND = "d3d12".

Runtime update checks

The Update checks menu at the top loads a set of files used to verify each Rive runtime update, from grid layouts and fitted text to scripting and GPU canvas shaders. Picking one resets the viewer to a known state and shows what to look for. The sample guide on GitHub lists each check and the automated render tests behind them.