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Moving from Motiff

If you designed in Motiff, you're looking for a new home, and not by choice. Motiff has been discontinued, and the window to get your work out is closing. This page is the honest map of the move: what to export before the deadline, the real ways to get those designs into Brilliant, what you'll be trading, and why a tool whose files live on your own disk is a safer place to land after a cloud tool disappears.

No spin here. Some of this is a rebuild, not a one-click import, and we say so plainly below.

1. Where things stand

A red banner now sits at the top of every page on motiff.com (checked 2026-08-25):

Motiff has been discontinued. Data export is available until October 31, 2026

The date that matters. Motiff's data export closes October 31, 2026. Motiff was a cloud tool, so that copy on their servers is the only copy of your work. When the export path closes, it's gone. Get out anything you want to keep before then.

Two things are worth knowing so you're not surprised. First, the professional editor you remember, the Figma-class vector tool, has been replaced on motiff.com by an AI UI generator called "Motiff AI." The old editor still exists, but only as an export destination: look for the Export old Motiff editor files link in the site footer, which points at motiff.com/export-files. Second, Motiff never published an open or documented file format, so there's no .motiff file you can hand to a converter. The way out is through the formats Motiff exports, which is what the rest of this page is about.

This is a real loss of a tool people chose and got good at. The goal here is just to make the move as clean as it can be.

2. Export your work before October 31

Start here, today, even if you haven't decided where you're going. The export is the one step with a hard deadline, and once it passes there's no second chance.

Open Motiff's own Export old Motiff editor files path and export everything Motiff offers you, in the richest format it gives you. Grab more than you think you need. Storage is cheap; a permanently deleted design is not recoverable.

When you get to choose a format, favor the ones a design tool can actually read back in, because that's what makes the next step possible:

  • Figma, if your plan offers it. Motiff's paid tier can copy generated UI to Figma. If you can get your work into a Figma file, that's the highest-fidelity path out, and Brilliant imports Figma directly (see below).

  • SVG for vector work. Motiff's editor historically exported SVG. SVG comes into Brilliant as real, editable vector elements, not a flat picture.

  • Images (PNG, JPEG, WebP) for everything else. Every Motiff tier can export images. They won't be editable geometry on the other side, but they're a faithful record of the design and a solid reference for rebuilding.

Whatever you pull down, keep it organized by screen or project so it's easy to find later. That's the whole job for now: get the bytes off Motiff's servers while you still can.

3. Getting your designs into Brilliant

Here's the honest part. Brilliant does not import Motiff files directly. There is no Motiff importer, and because Motiff's format was never open or documented, there's nothing to convert straight across. Anyone who tells you a Motiff-to-anything migration is lossless and automatic is selling you something.

What's real are three paths, and most moves use a mix of them.

Through Figma

This is the best path if it's open to you. If your work already lives in Figma too, or you can get a Figma copy out of Motiff before the deadline, Brilliant imports Figma files directly, and a lot comes across intact: auto layout, vector paths, boolean operations, arcs and rings, per-corner radii, solid and gradient fills, image fills with their bytes, drop shadow and blurs, text down to per-character overrides, and components and instances with their variant axes as real editable component sets.

Some things don't survive the wire, and they're written down rather than discovered later: non-variant component properties, interactive prototypes, and the bindings back to Figma Variables and shared styles (the resolved values come through, the links don't). The full walkthrough and fidelity notes are in Import from Figma.

Through SVG and images

For individual assets, export them from Motiff and bring them straight in. SVG imports as native, editable elements you can keep working on. Images (PNG, JPEG, WebP, and more) import as image fills. This is the reliable way to preserve logos, icons, and illustrations even when a whole-screen import isn't on the table.

Rebuild with agents

Where a clean import isn't possible, Brilliant is built for the rebuild. It's an MCP server as much as an editor, so an agent like Claude Code or Cursor can work directly on the canvas. Point it at one of the screenshots you exported, or describe the screen, and it builds it out as real, hand-editable vector elements, never a flattened image. Every canvas command it runs is undoable, so you can steer and revert freely, and MCP is unlimited even on the free plan.

Be clear-eyed about what this is: a re-creation, not a byte-for-byte transfer. The agent rebuilds from what it can see and what you tell it, and you finish the details by hand. For a lot of Motiff work, especially screens you were going to touch up anyway, that turns out to be faster than it sounds, and you land on a file you fully own.

4. What you'll be trading

Two honest concessions, so nothing catches you out after you've moved.

  • Variable modes. Motiff's editor historically supported up to 99 modes per variable collection, on every plan. Brilliant's design system does tokens, modes, and brands, but not at that count. If you leaned on a large stack of modes, plan to consolidate.

  • Interactive prototypes. Motiff's editor shipped clickable prototyping. Brilliant is a static canvas today, with no transitions or interactive hotspots (it's on the roadmap). If wiring up flows is central to your work, know that going in.

5. Why Brilliant is a safe place to land

The reason to move here, more than any single feature, is the thing that just went wrong with Motiff can't happen the same way.

  • Your files are yours, on your disk. A Brilliant workspace is a plain folder on your machine. Each canvas is a plain-text .bl Blueprint file, images sit in Assets/ directories beside them, and there's no hidden project database. Nothing uploads until you choose to publish. A folder on your own drive can't be discontinued out from under you, and because the files are plain text they drop straight into Git: branch them, review them, git blame a color change. Even a project you publish to brilliant.design is a real Git repository you can clone.

  • The design tool is free, for real. Every design feature, unlimited public projects, unlimited MCP, unlimited export, and version history cost nothing on the free tier. It's the whole tool, not a trial, which means you can move a project over and work in it for a week before committing to anything.

  • Agent-native, with your own keys. Unlimited MCP on every plan, agents driving the canvas through more than a hundred undoable commands, and BYOK, so you bring your own API key and Brilliant never hosts or proxies the inference. See Connect an agent.

  • No lock-in on the way out, either. Brilliant imports from Figma and has a Send to Figma path back, so you're never trapped here the way a cloud tool can trap you.

Brilliant is a static canvas today, so if you need clickable prototypes it isn't a full replacement yet. On everything else, you land on a real, professional editor whose files you actually own.

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