The habit
Somebody sends a Lottie. A Bodymovin JSON from After Effects, or a file you exported last week and now need back on a timeline. The AE habit is to open the comp, if you still have the comp. The JSON is a delivery format. Round-tripping it back into editable shapes is a partial trick at best. You get shapes, some transforms, some trim paths, and a list of features that became a single baked group or vanished. Illustrator will not open the JSON as a timeline. You drop the JSON into a preview site, nod, and ask for the AEP.
The hand still wants the JSON on the canvas when the AEP is gone. A logo animation arrives as a file. You need it in the same document as the poster, on a timeline you can scrub, with Space to play it. You also need to know the ceiling before you promise a client you can "just tweak the Lottie." Basic shape layers can come in. The full editable show is the .oma if you made it here, and it is not hiding inside a JSON that was only ever a subset.
Dropping a file on the canvas is the other habit. Images place. An .oma opens. A Lottie should import. You should not need a different door for a file the app already knows how to write.
The constraint
One .oma holds the clip. An import has to become objects and tracks in that document, on the timeline under the canvas, or it is a preview window and not an import. The rest pose rule still applies after the import. The artwork that lands is the artwork. The keys are the clip. A still PNG, JPEG, or static SVG export of this document remains the rest pose. Importing a Lottie does not switch the still exporters over to "current frame." You keep one rule for stills, whether the clip was authored here or brought in.
The importer's ceiling is a basic shape subset. Bodymovin files carry more than this studio promises to rebuild as editable objects. Promising the whole dialect would mean silent substitutions, the kind of import that looks open and is not the animation. The subset is the contract. Shape layers. The tracks this timeline knows. What does not fit does not pretend to fit.
Because the subset is basic, the .oma remains the file you keep when you want the complete editable animation. Export Lottie for delivery. Import Lottie to bring a shape-layer file onto the timeline. Save .oma if this document is now the working copy. The JSON you imported can stay in the folder as the delivery original. It is not a live link back to a cloud library. There is no Creative Cloud dependency in the import. The file is a file. The native dialog, or a drop, is the way in.
The document you saved before the import is the way back if the file was wrong and you do not want to keep the result. Save the poster first. Import second. A bad JSON does not get to be the only copy of the job.
What landed
Import Lottie… brings a shape-layer Lottie onto the timeline. The shapes become artwork in the document. The animation they carry becomes the clip you scrub in Motion. Space plays it. Home and End jump. The repeat icon loops the preview. You are in the same persona you use for a preset you made yourself.
The subset is basic shapes. Export Lottie… writes Bodymovin 5.x shape animation with trim paths and fill masks. Import Lottie… brings a shape-layer file back onto the timeline, and the manual is plain that this import is a basic subset. Keep the .oma when you need the complete editable animation. A JSON full of effects, images, and layer types outside that subset will not rebuild the comp you remember. Plan on the shapes that arrive. Author the rest here, or go get the original document.
Dropping a Lottie on the canvas imports it, the same way the file rules treat a drop: layered documents open, ordinary images place, .oma opens, Lottie imports. Import Lottie… is the menu when you want the dialog. The drop is the menu when the file is already in your hand.
PNG, JPEG, and static SVG export stay the rest pose after the import, as they do for any other clip. The playhead can sit mid-animation. The still is the rest pose of the document. Animated SVG and Lottie remain the exports that carry motion out again. If you imported a JSON, edited what the subset gave you, and need to deliver, export again from the File menu. The .oma is the version that still has the editable result.
If this studio authored the animation, prefer the .oma over a round trip through JSON. Export, import, export will not grow fidelity. The document already has the complete clip. The import path is for a Lottie that arrived from outside, or for a shape JSON you need to place into a document and keep.
In the hand
Save the poster you are adding the mark to. Then:
Import Lottie…
Pick the JSON in the native file dialog. A shape-layer file lands on the timeline. Switch to Motion if you are not already there. Press Space. Scrub. Look at the rows. The keys you can see are the keys you can edit: drag a diamond to retime, click a diamond and Delete to remove that key, press K to key transforms on a selection.
If the file was the wrong one, close it out of the document before you save, or go back to the .oma you saved before the import. Choose the other JSON.
Drop a .json Lottie on the canvas when you do not want the menu. It imports. Drop a PNG and you place an image. Drop an .oma and you open that document. The suffix is the decision.
Edit what came in. Save the .oma. That save is the working animation. The original JSON is still the original JSON on disk, unchanged by your edit, because you edited the document. Export Lottie again if the outside world needs a new delivery file. Export a PNG if they need the still, and know you are handing them the rest pose.
When the imported file is only half the motion you remember from AE, stop. The subset ended. Ask for the source comp, or rebuild the missing move here with presets and keys. The timeline will not invent the tracks the JSON did not give you as shapes.
The edge
Import refuses to promise more than a basic shape subset. A shape-layer Lottie can land on the timeline and be edited as objects and keys. The rest of the Bodymovin dialect is not reconstructed into a complete comp. The .oma you save afterward is as complete as the subset that arrived, plus whatever you author on top.
Still export refuses to follow the playhead. PNG, JPEG, and static SVG stay the rest pose. The imported clip leaves again only through animated SVG or Lottie.
Choose Import Lottie…, press Space, and save the .oma if this timeline is now the one you will edit.
The thread
Part 86 of 144 in the Omadesign 0.5.8 feature thread.