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RyanScammell
Inspiring
August 19, 2025

After Effects 2025 Crashing with Classic 3D Renderer + Vector PDFs

  • August 19, 2025
  • 4 replies
  • 312 views

Hi all,

 

Had about 50 crashes today.  I'm working on a scene, fairly standard simple stuff, essentially a tutorial showing off a client's UI and how it works.  The UI was provided as figma files which we downloaded as PDFs.  We've animated individual elements of the UI, then added 3D cameras to do some dynamic moves around the UI and focus in on certain elements. Because we get pretty close to elements of the UI, I have everything set to continuously rasterize.  And that's pretty much it. 

 

I'm not using any fancy plug-ins except for optical flares once in the beginning of the project. We have applied ease and wizz though to a lot of elements to speed up the animation process.

 

Anyways, I've been getting constant crashes. I've tried switching to a different machine (crashes there too). I worked in Safe Mode and got crashes there.  I thought briefly it might be related to auto-save (sometimes I know that can be an issue with folders syncing with dropbox) so I turned dropbox off.  (Still crashes).  It doesn't consistently happen on the same segments, so I can't identify a specific culprit like a singular layer or effect that could be triggering it.  I uninstalled and reinstalled AE and updated to the latest version. (Still crashes). I tried starting a new project and importing the old project into it. (Still crashes). I tried reducing the project to just the comps I was working with and getting rid of unused layers. (Still crashes.)

 

Really makes me think it's gotta be something with 3D and vector PDFs.

 

FYI, we're using the classic renderer. Neither the Advanced or Cinema 4D renderer will work because I am using blending modes. 

 

Anyone got any thoughts?  

4 replies

David.Arbor
Community Manager
David.ArborCommunity Manager
Community Manager
August 20, 2025

It's not that PDFs aren't supported, it's just that there's a bug somewhere in the way our library is rendering them. And yes, I wouldn't ask you to post the files publicly. I'll reach out to you via DM.

 

Thanks!
- David, After Effects Engineering Team

R
RyanScammellAuthor
Inspiring
August 20, 2025

Hi David,

 

Thanks so much for the prompt response. Much appreciated. And good to know it's not just me.  

 

For the future, if I open the PDFs as illustrator files and save them as AIs you think they'll behave better in AE? (Weird given that PDF was also created by Adobe.) Regardless, while it might be cumbersome, it could be something we could do if we really can't work around these crashes and would be good to know for the future.  (FYI, the project ultimately all rendered out, albeit with a couple crashes along the way.  Now it's just a question of the revision requests.)

 

Strange that only one report came through from me. I've clicked send report at least 90% of the times and about a quarter of those times tried to write up details about what caused the crash.

 

As far as sharing the files, is there a way I can connect with you offline?  Since it's the client's UI I'm not sure I can post it broadly online in a forum like this.  Sending Adobe something directly for the limited purpose of troubleshooting is probably ok though.

 

Let me know. 

David.Arbor
Community Manager
David.ArborCommunity Manager
Community Manager
August 20, 2025

Good morning, @RyanScammell, I have a bit of new info.

 

This is a known issue that we're currently invesigating. It appears the problem might be with font rendering, so a few questions:

 

  1. Are you able to send me a few of the PDFs that guarantee a crash? If we can reproduce the crash, that can really help with our investigation.
  2. We haven't been able to determine whether a specific typeface is causing the problem. Are you using multiple typefaces in this project or just one? 
  3. I know it might be a pain, but as a test, if you can go through all your active fonts and disable any that aren't currently being used, that could also give us some useful data.

    Thanks,

- David, After Effects Engineering Team

David.Arbor
Community Manager
David.ArborCommunity Manager
Community Manager
August 19, 2025

Hey @RyanScammell , sorry about the trouble. Despite the plethora of crashes, I only see one report from you that made it to your system. But thank you for actually filling out the Crash Reporter dialog! I asked our devs to take a look and hopefully I can get back to you with an answer tomorrow.

 

PDFs can be very tricky and problematic. I've ended up converting my fair share to Illustrator files to avoid performance issues, but hopefully that won't be necessary here. 

 

In the meantime, I'll ask if this is a project you can share with me. If so, it won't be shared outside of the AE team, and will only be used to help troubleshoot the issues.

 

A quick glance at your crash log does show an error about non-ascii characters. Do some of your text layers have special characters? If so, maybe you could try replacing those or recreating them as native type layers in AE.

 

Thanks,
- David, After Effects Engineering Team

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