How to rotate floating action button without rotating shadow?

Question

I rotate the FAB in such a simple way:

fab.startAnimation(AnimationUtils.loadAnimation(this, R.anim.rotate));

rotate.xml:

Answer 1

There's an entirely another approach that works flawlessly for me (the one suggested in the accepted answer produces a clipped shadow on pre-L). Create an XML drawable and wrap your FAB icon into a tag like this:

Set this drawable to your FAB, and animate either its level directly or the imageLevel property of the FAB itself; it goes from 0 to 10000. If you'd like an OvershootInterpolator, then set toDegrees to 90 and animate the level up to the value of 5000 so it doesn't go beyond the bounds.