Convert Illustrator and other vector file types into shape layers in After Effects while avoiding common pitfalls that can disrupt your workflow. This article highlights technical challenges and best practices when working with complex graphics and repetitive animations.
Key Insights
- Converting complex Illustrator, PDF, or EPS files to shape layers in After Effects can be unreliable, especially when the artwork contains intricate details like numerous diagonal lines.
- For repetitive animations, such as sliding circular indicators, it's more efficient to animate a single instance and duplicate it rather than animating each individually.
- Noble Desktop recommends using Illustrator to edit vector files before importing into After Effects, but if that’s not an option, be prepared for potential issues during conversion, such as excessive shape group generation.
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So I'm in the shape animation HUD file I started and I have created several different animations here. Some I've drawn shape layers, some I've worked with imported native illustrator files, some I've converted, imported shape layers into vector layers. And that's the part I want to talk about.
So when converting illustrator files or imported PDFs or imported EPS files, whatever vector file format you have into shape layers, it can be tricky. So far it's actually pretty good, but I can't always guarantee it's going to work. The more complex the graphic is, the more detailed it is, the less likely the convert command will actually work on it.
That's the thing to keep in mind. So normally most people recommend only doing this conversion if you absolutely have to, if there's something you absolutely need to be able to do. Now, if you are an illustrator user, you can open the imported illustrator files, the native files back in illustrator, or even if they're PDFs or EPS files, same thing, you can open an illustrator, make changes to them and then use those converted files here in After Effects.
But if you don't have that ability, sometimes you have no choice but do a conversion, okay? So in this area, the goal is to create these little circular balls in this part of photograph and basically animate them so that they slide back and forth, left and right. Now, again, as anything repetitive is, it's probably better to just like make that into one of them and just like make one layer that has all the balls and all the shapes and stuff, animate the ball and boom, duplicate it, line it up, you're good to go. Now the problem is going to be this particular graphic.
So I'm going to zoom in on this again, I'm clicking and dragging to zoom in. If I zoom in badly, I can press and hold H on my keyboard to get the hand tool and just pan around, okay? So the problem I have here is this, could I redraw this in After Effects? Maybe. The outer lines are just rectangles, no big deal.
That's a circle and ellipse, no big deal. It's the diagonal lines. I'd have to make a whole bunch of diagonal lines and spread them out, which is actually fairly hard to do in this program because I have to do it manually.
But I could do it if you want to take a long time. So my goal here though, I think is just to try to convert it. But what you're going to find is in this particular file, this is going to create a problem.
So let's see how this works. So again, I'll right click on this, go to select. I'm not sure what layer is.
It's the graph sliders. I cannot see the bounding box around it because that little button got turned off. I don't know why that happens, but it does.
I might have pressed the keyboard shortcut by accident. Okay. Again, I'm going to pre-compose this.
I can right click on it, pre-compose or any of the other pre-compose options. I'll move the number one from the name just because I like doing that. And I'll leave all attributes again.
So I end up with a comp that's the same size. I like using tab to jump from comp to comp. And right there, it's the graph slider graphs.
Okay. Remember pressing tab will open up this little mini flow chart view right near your cursor. And you can use it to navigate around whenever you have nested comps.
It's the same display that actually pops up right at the top of the composition panel as well. So same display. Okay.
That looks good. I like that. Let's try this.
I'm going to convert this. Create. So you right click on the layer, create menu, create shapes and vector layer.
Let's see what happens. It may not be obvious, but that took a noticeable amount of time. The other conversions I did were like instantaneous.
That actually took a second or two. Hmm. That suggests there might be a problem here.
Here's the problem. This is the number of shapes I have. So each of those shapes all together is 116 of them.
So let's see what this does. Come to group one. That selects.
Group two. That selects. Each of those lines has its own group in this case.
Okay. And if I slide down far enough, hello, far enough, far enough, far enough in that list. I'm just like sliding down.
I'm looking for 30, by the way. 30. That starts the next circle.
