How to add animations and transitions

In this lesson, you’ll learn how to bring your videos to life using animations, motion elements, and scene transitions in HeyGen. These tools help your content feel more dynamic, polished, and engaging, without requiring any external editing software.

Animate elements in your scenes

In HeyGen, you can animate almost any element, including text, images, icons, and even avatars.

Start by clicking the element you want to animate. Once selected, animation markers appear in the Script Panel. These markers control when the element enters and exits the scene.

You can drag the markers along the timeline to align the animation with your script. Then open the Animation menu and choose a style such as Fade, Slide, Zoom, or Pop. Hover over each option to see a live preview before applying it.

Use the Duration slider to control how fast or slow the animation plays. When you’re finished, click Preview to see how it looks in context.

Add Premium Motion Elements

To add extra visual polish, you can use Premium Motion Elements. These include animated intros, speaker cards, headlines, quotes, and typewriter-style text, designed to work seamlessly with avatars.

Open the Elements tab, select Motion, and drag a motion element into your scene. You can customize the text, move or resize it on the canvas, and control its timing using the same animation markers.

Preview the scene to see the motion elements animate naturally alongside your content.

Add scene transitions

Transitions help your video flow smoothly from one scene to the next.

In the bottom timeline, hover between two scenes and click the three-dot menu, then select Add Scene Transition. Choose from styles like Fade, Slide, or Zoom.

You can adjust the transition duration to make it faster or slower, and apply it to a single transition or across all scenes in your video. A live preview appears in the editor so you can fine-tune the effect until it feels right.

Use Magic Match for seamless flow

Magic Match is a smart transition that automatically animates shared elements between scenes.

If an element appears at the end of one scene and again at the start of the next, Magic Match creates a smooth, continuous motion between them. To use it, copy the element and paste it into the following scene so it appears in both.

Then click the three dots between the scenes, choose Add Scene Transition, and select Magic Match. HeyGen handles the animation automatically, creating a seamless visual connection.