How to Import Figma into After Effects (2026 Guide)

Why Figma to After Effects is harder than it should be

Figma and After Effects describe a design in completely different ways. Figma thinks in frames, Auto Layout, components, and fills stacked on a single layer. After Effects thinks in compositions, shape layers, text layers, masks, and effects.

There's no "open .fig" option in After Effects, and Adobe doesn't ship a bridge. So every route is really a translation, and how much survives depends on who's doing the translating:

• Text: does it stay live and editable, or turn into pixels and outlines?
• Shapes: do rectangles stay rectangles with real corner radius, or become a flat image?
• Styling: do gradients, per-side strokes, shadows, blurs and masks look the same?
• Structure: are the layers named and grouped so you can actually animate them?

If any of those break, you end up fixing or rebuilding by hand, and that's the time you were trying to save.

The 4 ways to get Figma into After Effects

1. Export PNG or SVG and import it

The built-in route: select a frame in Figma, export it as PNG or SVG, then drag the file into After Effects. It's free and takes seconds.

The catch: it arrives as one flat footage layer. Text isn't editable, you can't animate individual buttons or cards, and complex fills often don't survive. You can export every element separately, but then you're lining up dozens of files by hand. Fine for a static background, painful for UI animation.

2. Rebuild the design by hand in After Effects

Many motion designers still do this: keep the Figma file open on a second screen and redraw every shape, text box and shadow in AE. The result is clean and fully editable, because you built it.

The catch: it's slow. A single app screen can take one to three hours, and every design revision from the client means doing part of it again.

3. AEUX

AEUX is a free, open-source plugin pair (Figma + After Effects) that has helped a lot of designers move UI into AE. For simple layouts with basic shapes and text, it does a good job.

The catch: on real-world designs, more complex styling often doesn't come across as designed. In our side-by-side tests, mixed text doubled up and shifted, image masks were ignored, image strokes drifted, drop shadows landed in the wrong place, and soft blurs turned into hard squares. You can see the exact results in the comparison below.

4. UI Flow

UI Flow is a Figma plugin plus an After Effects extension built for one job: rebuild the Figma design inside AE as native, editable layers that match the original. Shapes become shape layers, text stays live text (including mixed styles and gradient text), and shadows, blurs, masks and blend modes are rebuilt as real AE effects. Nothing gets flattened unless you ask for it.

The catch: it's a two-part install (Figma plugin + AE extension), and the free plan includes 25 exports every 30 days. After that it's a one-time lifetime license, not a subscription. The good news: it's completely free for everyone in Bangladesh, with no limits.

Side by side

Same Figma frames, exported with UI Flow and with AEUX. Pick a case to compare, and click any image to zoom in.

Step by step: import Figma into After Effects with UI Flow

Here's the full workflow, from install to editable layers. Setup takes about five minutes the first time. After that, every export is one click.

1. Download the After Effects extensionGrab the latest version from the download page. It's a ZIP containing a .zxp file, the standard format for AE extensions.
2. Install the ZXPUse a ZXP installer (for example the free aescripts ZXP Installer). Open it, drag in the .zxp file, and restart After Effects.
3. Add the Figma pluginOpen the UI Flow plugin on Figma Community and click Open in… / Save. It then shows up under Plugins in any file.
4. Allow scripts in After EffectsOne-time setting: in AE go to Edit → Preferences → Scripting & Expressions (on Mac, After Effects → Settings) and turn on Allow Scripts to Write Files and Access Network.
5. Open the UI Flow panel in AEGo to Window → Extensions → UI Flow. Keep the panel open: it's what receives your design.
6. Prep your frame in FigmaRun the plugin, select your frame and click Prep for AE. It removes Auto Layout, detaches components and styles, and deletes hidden layers. It's optional for simple frames, but it prevents most surprises.
7. Click "Send to Ae"With the frame selected, click Send to Ae. Switch to After Effects and your design is there as a composition, with every shape, text box and image on its own named layer.

Handy extras in the Figma panel

• Reference guide: adds a 50% opacity snapshot of the frame on top, so you can check your animation lines up with the original.
• Flag as PNG: mark any layer (a complex illustration, a 3D render) to come across as a flat image while everything else stays editable.
• Guide image only: sends just a picture of the frame when you don't need the layers.

Bonus: bring your Figma animation across too

If you've started animating in Figma, you don't have to redo it. UI Flow's Motion transfer (beta) sends the animation as real After Effects keyframes, not a baked video. Position, scale, opacity and the rest land on the timeline, ready to refine with proper easing, motion blur and everything else AE does better.

You can watch both modes, static and motion, in the interactive demo on the UI Flow page.

Common problems (and how to fix them)

Text shows up in the wrong font

After Effects uses fonts installed on your computer, while Figma can use web fonts. If the font isn't installed locally, AE swaps in a fallback. Install the same fonts (Google Fonts are free to download), then send again. UI Flow shows a missing-font alert after each transfer so you know which ones to grab.

Nothing arrives in After Effects

• Check the UI Flow panel is open in AE when you click Send. It has to be running to receive the design.
• Check that Allow Scripts to Write Files and Access Network is turned on (step 4).

Layout shifts or extra layers

Usually caused by Auto Layout, component instances, or hidden layers. Run Prep for AE on a duplicate of the frame, then send that copy, and your original stays untouched.

Rotated images with strokes look slightly off

Images that are rotated in Figma and also have a stroke can come across slightly larger. The cleanest fix: keep the card unrotated in Figma and rotate it in After Effects, where you'll probably animate it anyway.

FAQ

The bottom line

For a quick static background, a PNG export is fine. For anything you actually want to animate, like UI screens, product demos, or app promos, you want real layers. Rebuilding by hand gets you there slowly. A plugin gets you there in one click, and the one you pick decides how much cleanup you do afterwards.

UI Flow was built because I was tired of fixing broken exports before I could even start animating. Try it free on your next project and see what comes across.