Import Figma designs into After Effects — Is it possible?
Intro
Figma has become the de facto standard tool for any UI UX related design work. Most designers and teams ditched Adobe XD and Sketch and have migrated over to Figma. Figma’s team collaboration features have given it a massive competitive advantage over Adobe XD and Sketch. Due to the shift towards remote work those features have become more and more important.
Adobe still holds a very strong grip in the design space. Integrations between their tools are more seamless compared to anything outside of the Adobe universe. Unfortunately that means if you want to import illustrations from Figma or Sketch into tools like After Effects or Illustrator you still have to go through SVG or PDF. Going through those generic formats usually means at least parts of your designs will break. You’ll end up having to spend hours fixing them up after importing them. Not ideal, right?! 😖
A particular common use-case is importing designs from Figma into Adobe After Effects. There’s a couple of solutions to that problem and we’re going to discuss them in this article.
So let’s get to it 🚀
Our options:
- Going through PDF
- Going through Adobe XD to import assets in After Effects
- Going through Photoshop (PSD)
- A Direct Figma to After Effects converter
Adobe has an overview of which applications out of the Adobe Universe work best with After Effects: https://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/using/effects-applications.html
One thing missing in the official Adobe documentation is that you can also import Adobe Illustrator files into After Effects. Going through Illustrator is probably the most known way to get assets into Adobe After Effects (side note: we will see later that it isn’t necessarily the best). There’s a very helpful article which goes into the details of how to best prepare an Adobe Illustrator file to be imported into After Effects: https://www.creativebloq.com/how-to/how-to-prepare-illustrator-graphics-for-after-effects
Let’s have a more detailed look at the options we mentioned above:
Going through PDF
When trying to move your designs from Figma to After Effects the first idea that comes to mind is to simply export your assets from Figma as PDF and then importing the PDF in After Effects.
Let’s see how well that works 🤔
We’ve prepared a little dummy design file in Figma for a mobile app.
Once you’ve opened your design all you have to do is select an artboard and then export it as PDF, which is supported by default.
In After Effects simply click “File” -> “Import” -> “File…” and select your PDF file.
As you can see the results are not very good, unfortunately no layers got imported.
Your next thought might be, maybe I can import the PDF file in Illustrator and then import the Illustrator file in After Effects. Well… hold my beer…
That didn’t work out either. I guess that didn’t really work out did it
Going through XD to import assets in AE
Adobe XD actually has a direct export to After Effects option. Whenever you have a design in Adobe XD you can simply click on “File” -> “Export” -> “After Effects”:
So how do you get your Figma designs into XD?
There’s currently two ways to convert a Figma design to Adobe XD.
Both options are paid.
Convertify is a monthly subscription, whereas Magicul is a one-time purchase. In our tests Magicul produced more accurate results compared to Convertify.
Let’s take our dummy Figma file from earlier and get it converted to XD:
The result from Magicul:
The result from Convertify:
Generally speaking the results of the Convertify Converter were ok if you only need very simple things. Magicul handled even complex designs very well.
Once you have your designs in Adobe XD, simply select “File” -> “Export” -> “After Effects…”
This will open the artboard you have selected directly in Adobe After Effects.
Here are the results with Magicul and Convertify:
Direct Figma to AfterEffects converter
It seems like Magicul is currently working on a direct Figma to After Effects converter, which looks very promising. Apparently the converter is currently only available to a handful of beta testers.
I’ve signed up for the waitlist but unfortunately they haven’t gotten back to me yet.
Feel free to sign up yourself here: https://magicul.io/converter/figma-to-after-effects
Going through PSD
The last option that we’ll look at is going through Photoshop. This way isn’t ideal since Photoshop is not a vector based tool and might lead to pixelated results in After Effects.
In order to get your Figma designs into Photoshop you also have to use a converter like Magicul. To convert your Figma file to PSD, once you’ve done that you can open it in Photoshop to make sure the results are good.
Afterwards simply import the file into After Effects by selecting “File” -> “Import” -> “File…”.
Make sure to select “Composition — Retain Layer Sizes” and “Merge Layer Styles into Footage”.
Unfortunately the results look very underwhelming.
Summary
I think we’ve covered most options in terms of how it’s possible to import assets from Figma in Adobe After Effects. Unfortunately only two solutions pass the bar of providing acceptable results.
I found the conversion of the Magicul converter the most accurate and I’d recommend going with that. They have a great product and I will definitely use it again for my next After Effects project which involves importing any assets from Figma.
