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Importing from After Effects

If you are a After Effects user, you might find it useful to convert your After Effects compositions to Remotion compositions. You can use the @remotion/lottie package for this.

note

Remotion compositions got their name because After Effects coined this term!

Install the Bodymovin plugin​

  • Make sure After Effects is closed.
  • Go to this site and download the ZXP installer for your platform.
  • Click here to download the latest Bodymovin plugin.
  • Open the ZXP installer and drag the bodymovin file into it.

Create a composition​

Open After Effects and create a new project and then click New composition.

Create your animation​

Design your animation in After Effects. In this basic example, we used the rounded rectangle tool to draw a blue rounded square and then opened the transform menu and clicked the stopwatch icon to set keyframes for position and rotation to create a simple entrance effect.

Allow export as JSON​

In the After Effects menu, go to Preferences -> Scripting & Expressions.... Enable the first option: Allow Scripts to Write Files and Access Network. You only need to do this once.

Open the Bodymovin plugin​

In the After Effects menu, go to Window -> Extensions -> Bodymovin.

Export the animation as JSON​

First, select the composition

1
. Then press the export icon
2
. You will be prompted for a location to save the JSON file. Click Render
3
to write the file.

Import the file into Remotion​

Copy the file into the Remotion project. The recommended way is to put the JSON inside the public/ folder of Remotion (create it if necessary) and then load it using staticFile():

Animation.tsx
tsx
import { continueRender, delayRender, staticFile } from "remotion";
import { useEffect, useState } from "react";
import { Lottie, LottieAnimationData } from "@remotion/lottie";
 
const Balloons = () => {
  const [handle] = useState(() => delayRender("Loading Lottie animation"));
 
  const [animationData, setAnimationData] =
    useState<LottieAnimationData | null>(null);
 
  useEffect(() => {
    fetch(staticFile("animation.json"))
      .then((data) => data.json())
      .then((json) => {
        setAnimationData(json);
        continueRender(handle);
      })
      .catch((err) => {
        console.log("Animation failed to load", err);
      });
  }, [handle]);
 
  if (!animationData) {
    return null;
  }
 
  return <Lottie animationData={animationData} />;
};
Animation.tsx
tsx
import { continueRender, delayRender, staticFile } from "remotion";
import { useEffect, useState } from "react";
import { Lottie, LottieAnimationData } from "@remotion/lottie";
 
const Balloons = () => {
  const [handle] = useState(() => delayRender("Loading Lottie animation"));
 
  const [animationData, setAnimationData] =
    useState<LottieAnimationData | null>(null);
 
  useEffect(() => {
    fetch(staticFile("animation.json"))
      .then((data) => data.json())
      .then((json) => {
        setAnimationData(json);
        continueRender(handle);
      })
      .catch((err) => {
        console.log("Animation failed to load", err);
      });
  }, [handle]);
 
  if (!animationData) {
    return null;
  }
 
  return <Lottie animationData={animationData} />;
};

Finetuning​

It is advised to make your composition the same size and duration as the original composition in After Effects. Congrats, you're playing an After Effects animation in Remotion! 🎉

See also​