Transforming Vector Layers into Dynamic Shape Animations in After Effects

For this lesson, we'll be taking a group of imported vector layers and turning them into live After Effects shape layers. So I can use one of the shape layer only effects on them to animate them. So before I do that, I'm just going to take a couple of seconds to organize my project panel here.

I'll just make a new folder. I like numbering my folders, so I'm going to call it 04-precomps. And I'm going to take my world map comp and drop it in there.

Shape animation is my main. I am going to take the shape animation HUD layer, drop it itself on the folder, and I'm just going to call this 101-images. That way I can keep things nice and organized.

And again, that's my main. I can rename that if I want, but I'll leave it right there. So for this part of the lesson, I'm going to be using the hatch lines one.

I'm holding down the shift key on my keyboard. Hatch lines one, hatch lines two, marker solid, marker outline, and line bundle. So I'll just highlight hatch lines one, hold down shift, line bundle, and they're all highlighted.

I'm going to pre-compose these. So again, right click, pre-compose. Or the keyboard shortcut is Command Shift C on Mac, Control Shift C on Windows.

Pre-compose. Notice that the leave all attributes is disabled. So leave all attributes only works when you have a single layer selected.

Move all attributes to the only other choice because it wouldn't know what attributes to leave and what attributes to send if you didn't do it this way. So it's good. I'm just going to rename this one animated lines.

You can call it whatever you want, honestly. I've got both of these options disabled, so I'll just say OK. And they all get consolidated into one.

I'm going to rename this because right now it's using the name of the it's using the name of the composition. I'm just going to call it animated lines hyphen bundled or animated actually animated lines hyphen bundled. Because it's a whole bunch of layers together.

And it was like in this, this, the two markers, and the lines later. So that actually worked out pretty well. I like that.

So I want to go into this comp and you can just double click on it. That's no problem at all. Also, the comp is up here in project panel.

I'm going to grab that and drop it into precomps as well. But the way I really like is just a keyboard command tab key. When you tap tab, it'll give you this little mini flow chart view.

And it basically shows you the comp you're in and any nested comps that are linked to running into it. So it's animated lines. Click.

It's cool. The order, by the way, those appear in is the order of layers. That's good.

I like that. So right now, and possibly not at all, I'm not going to use the markers. I might not need to use them depending on what I want to animate.

And I also might not need these hatch lines. I'm just going to turn the visibility off. I want to focus only on the line bundle.

I might come back a little bit later to animate those. But keep in mind, just because something was included by a designer, it may not actually make it into the final animation. Sometimes it changes.

So you may have layers you don't need. I don't want to delete them just in case I in fact do later get told to animate them. It's just easier to keep them around and just hide them.

So right now, all I can do is animate the position, rotation, opacity, scale, standard transform properties of that layer. That's all it's got. If I open up its properties, it's just transform.

Always is. But if I right click on that, create shapes from vector layer, I'm going to get that. Now what that is, is the individual lines.

Okay, like that. Now the program is going to name them group 1, group 2, group 3, group 4, group 5, that sort of thing. But they are in fact lines.

Now this is weird. The last time I clicked on a shape in the properties panel, I actually saw it highlight. And in this case, it's because that option has gotten disabled.

Toggle mask and shape path visibility. Now when it's active, I can actually see highlighting the layers. Now for the record, if you wanted to, you could name these.

So I double click line 1, pops up, right there is group 1. I can right click on it, but notice rename is not a choice. To rename shapes, you got to use your keyboard shortcut. So you have to highlight the thing you want to name, in this case group 1. Press return or enter on your keyboard and it becomes, the name becomes editable.

This is the left number 1. So I'll call it left 1. Left 1. Okay, I'm going to find group 2, double click. If the timeline highlights when you double click on a shape in the properties panel, you can immediately use your keyboard to activate the name. So this is actually coming from the right.

So this is going to be right. I'll call it 1 again. So it's right 1. Okay, 3. Technically that is actually probably right 3. So I'll double click, return or enter on my keyboard.

I'm going based on the order they appear on the right side. So right 3. Okay, what is 4? 4 is actually one of the top ones. Where is that one? Right there.