Motion System

Motion System lets you author and apply motion design elements — reusable design decisions for color, font, easing, motion presets, and asset collections — across After Effects compositions. It's the AE plugin's hook into LottieFiles' design-element-for-motion system, which also runs in Lottie Creator and on the web.

If you've used color elements or text styles in a static design system, Motion System extends the same idea to time-based properties. Easing curves, animation presets, and motion-specific colors become named elements you reuse across animations, instead of redefining them per comp.

In this chapter

When to use Motion System

  • You're shipping multiple Lotties that should share a visual language (brand colors, signature easing curves).

  • You're working across AE and Lottie Creator and want one source of truth for motion-specific style.

  • You need themed Lotties (light/dark, brand variants) that change consistently across files.

  • Workspace — Motion Systems are saved to the workspace; that's where they're discoverable across team members.

  • Render — themes and elements require .lottie (dotLottie) format to ship to runtime.

Last updated: June 9, 2026 at 8:42 AMEdit this page