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Question

Disappearing Illustrator Layers/Assets, AE CS5

Forum|Forum|15 years ago
January 28, 2011
17 replies
38587 views

Hey guys,

First my specs, just in case:

MAC OSX 10.6.6

AE CS5 10.0.1.19

8-Core

24 GB RAM

I'm having the strangest issues with adobe illustrator layers in my timeline... they keep disappearing at random moments during playback. Somtimes its during RAM preview, somtimes its when I'm scrubbing the timeline, but never at the same point and it doesn't seem to be consistant for which layers dissapear or appear. To be clear, the layers themselves are not disappearing in the timeline, but in my active view/camera.

There are 13 illustrator layers, all of them are 3D Layers. I have, at various points, been able to see all of my layers when they should appear on screen, so Its not an issue of a layer getting in the way of my camera and obscuring anything (i don't think). It's not an opacity issue... It seems to be something with my illustrator files and CS5. I've even tried moving the files over to a different machine, and I've tried opening up the project on a Windows box, but the problem persists. I'm truly puzzled.

Its not the biggest issue at the moment, as long as I can get a clean playback in AE for my client this evening, but I'm scared to continue working only to find that I can't render out any of my final project to broadcast.

Anyone have any clues? I'll post updates as needed.

Thanks in advance,

Dylan

Show previous replies

C

Cote123

Participant

I had the same problem. I did a render in HDV (1280x720) MP4 and some layers they disappeared when I tried to do render.

The solution that I founded is make the render without compression. Only AVI Uncompresed UYVY and after that compress the clip to the format do you need with the Media Composer.

It was the solution for me.

Suerte y saludos!.

M

Mackenzie9999

Participant

Thanks for the response. What worked for me was to re-save the Illustrator file with compression turned off.

Michael MacKenzie Design

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Milton, MA 02186

Home: (617) 615-8137

Cell: (781) 608-5149

View my demo reel at www.michael-mackenzie.com

N

naatb-NI1VTZ

Participant

i'm using CS5.5 and i had the same problem... Some layers dissapeared, others were half visible (seemed to be cut). Changing AE setting didn't help, only saving the AI file without compression worked out, at least for now. Pity that AE developers haven't fixed that bug in CS5.5, since it already appeared in CS5

D

DeidraTyree

Participant

Hey all!

I soooo had this problem late last night at 1 am in the morning, and though my project is due today, I got so frustrated that I just shut everything down and turned my computer off! But, when I opened up everything this morning, it was working fine... (twilight zone soundtrack music)

After reading everyone's posts, the only explanation I have is to shut it all down and restart your computer. My computer is set to clear all my caches and other extras, which refreshes the computer's RAM and resets the program software. If you're work load is as big as mine (or bigger) you might set your system up to do the same, clear everything out, SAVE AS, and Restart. As long as you can see all your layers and effects, and the problem is being able to see a preview in active camera, this should work.

Good Luck!

M

Mackenzie9999

Participant

I am experiencing this problem as well, and while on hold with Tech Support (who told me no solutiuon exists) I figured out a solution that so far has worked for me. The problem is in how Illustrator saves the file; by default "use compression" is checked; after re-saving the AI file with compression un-checked the problem has gone away.

cflnest

Inspiring

Great that you solved this for your project. I always uncheck compression, so this solution won't work for me.

I finally gave up on my comp with disappearing layers & moved on to other stuff. Fortunately, no problems with infinitely more complex projects in CS5.5.

T

thedillpickleAuthor

Participating Frequently

This seemed to be an issue with the continuous rasterization bug that is documented elsewhere on these forums. If you make sure that every layer with the illustrator files has "continuous rasterization" turned on, then it should fix the bug, or at least it did for me.

L

Luke Murphy

Participating Frequently

None of these standard solutions have worked for me; or in some cases, they seem to work, then the problem recurs. Among the standard fixes that I've applied are: switch on Continuous Rasterize for all Illustrator layers, turn off Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously multiprocessing, and turn on thumbnails in the Project panel. Last time my Illustrator files weren't appearing, I was able to get them to show up by converting brush strokes to outlines in Illustrator and resaving the files.

The Illustrator files are now working okay as long as they're 2D, but I've just converted them to 3D layers and I'm back to square one. I can see the layers in Active Camera view but they disappear in any other view; and when I can see the Illustrator layers, they don't respond when I move the camera around and act as if they're 2D.

After Effects CS5 is now unusable for me. I'm going to have to revert to CS4.

cflnest

Inspiring

I'm also having a problem with disappearing Illustrator layers in AE CS5.

When I open up the comp, only the layer bounding boxes and anchor points are visible against the background color. The layers have become entirely transparent, but opacity is set to 100%. The asset thumbnails in the project panel are also affected.

Here's the really strange thing: the layer visibility will return temporarily if I open the layer panel, and click the layer eyeball on and off. When the file is opened again, the layers are invisible again.

Rebuilding the project, reloading the assets and purging the cache makes no difference. Turning on the continuously rasterize switch for each layer does seem to help. This is a very, very simple 2-D test comp: no nesting, effects or even animation yet. I will probably try rebuilding the project in AE CS4 to see if the same problem occurs.

I'm a beginner and have only been using After Effects since last fall (iMac i5/16 GB running OSX 10.6.6).

L

Luke Murphy

Participating Frequently

I can verify that this is happening to me too routinely since moving to AE CS5. It only seems to happen to Illustrator layers. It is possible to get the layers to display properly if they're exported to Photoshop but this is not a solution for most of my purposes.

A

Anonymous

Unfortunately I have no solutions but I am having the exact same problem. It seems to be some type of bug as all can be fine and well one minute, then you save & exit, go back in later and an illustrator layer has disappeared. Again, the layers are not disappearing in the timeline, just in the active camera view. I've noticed when they disappear in RAM preview, they are still there when scrubbing and vice versa. My setup is pretty feeble compared to yours so perhaps it is just a RAM thing...

MAC OS X 10.6.5

2.4GHz Intel Core i5

Memory 4GB

AE CS5 10.0.1.09

AI CS5 15.0.0

A

Anonymous

I should also point out that I already had 'Render Multiple Files Simultaneously' switched off when the problem started. I've just discovered that if I bring the resolution down to half on the RAM preview then everything is back so perhaps for me it is just the frailties of my machine...I don't see how that could be true in your case though...

A

Anonymous

The half res solution was short lived I'm afraid, I have 3 layers which are taking it in turns to disappear. You can make them visible by putting the preview down to half res, then they disappear again, upping it back to full res or putting it down to 1/3 then seem to solve the problem...for about 5 minutes. It's now got to the stage where I'm constantly changing the display resolution just to see my layers again. The real bad news is that despite getting the preview to the stage where I can see all of my disappearing layers & everything is behaving as it should, the render is missing a layer.

Is nobody else having these problems? This is an absolute nightmare.

Dave_LaRonde

Inspiring

thedillpickle wrote:
First my specs, just in case:
MAC OSX 10.6.6
AE CS5 10.0.1.19
8-Core
24 GB RAM

That kind of machine ought to work well for multiprocessing. So if Todd recommends turning multiprocessing off, you simply may have your memory and processor allocations out of whack.

Check out this blog, also by the Good Mr. Kopriva:

http://blogs.adobe.com/toddkopriva/2010/10/please-try-recommended-memory-settings-for-after-effects-cs5-and-give-feedback.html

Todd_Kopriva

Inspiring

It's possible that there's a bug with how the Illustrator files are being used when Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously multiprocessing is turned on. I haven't seen such a thing, but it's possible.

T

thedillpickleAuthor

Participating Frequently

If I turn off "Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously" OR if I use Open GL, then the project Renders just fine. However, with "Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously" off the render time is increased to about 13 min for a 30 second comp.

Could it have anything to do with Nesting my composition? If I have multiple 3D .ai layers in one comp, and I precompose/nest that comp inside another one, should I turn on 3D for that nested composition, or should I leave it off? And if I leave it off, will I still be able to navigate a camera around those objects in 3D space?

I'll try turning off 3D for the nested comp and then see if Render Multiple Frames works...

Also, thanks for the quick replies, and I'm sorry it took me a bit to get back on this one. Busy Busy all the time!

T

thedillpickleAuthor

Participating Frequently

At least I can get my playback in AE to be correct by Purging the Cache, but I need to be able to render out a final movie.

And upon futher work I was able to get an output with "Render using Open GL" checked, but I was told not to use this by Todd here: http://forums.adobe.com/thread/734343

Is this still true, or did this change with the update?

Todd_Kopriva

Inspiring

If rendering using OpenGL gives you results that you're happy with, go ahead and do it. But most people aren't happy with it.

I'm guessing that the reason that rendering with OpenGL made things work is that OpenGL turns off Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously multiprocessing. Try turning that off directly and not using OpenGL.

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