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Essential fix needed: AE doesn’t keep Illustrator transparency in shapes

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Adobe needs to address some basic issues in its software. A particularly frustrating one is that when you create a shape from an Illustrator layer with transparency, After Effects completely ignores the transparency.

This seems like a simple fix, especially considering both programs are from Adobe. As paying subscribers, we expect essential improvements like this instead of having to rely on paid plugins to fix something that should work natively.

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Olavo RamosAuthor

Participant

Hello, @Kevin-Monahan and @Warren Heaton10841144 ! Thank you very much for your attention to this topic.

I'd like to explain the process with visual examples so you can better understand the issue I’m dealing with.

My final product is an .json animation, so the files must remain vector-based. Bitmaps are completely out of the question in this context. I work with companies whose design systems contain elements with various opacity levels. Often, there are many elements with altered transparency, making manual adjustments impractical and prone to errors and rework.

Here’s a real example of the issue:

First image – In Illustrator, the interface appears correctly, with the background set to #FFFFFF at 12% opacity.

Second image – In After Effects, when importing the Illustrator file as a layer, everything still works as expected.

Third image – When converting this Illustrator layer to a shape in After Effects, the background loses its transparency and turns completely white. Since After Effects does not translate opacity values correctly, what was #FFFFFF at 12% opacity becomes #FFFFFF at 100% opacity.

I understand that there are workarounds, but they require tedious manual adjustments and element comparisons. This issue becomes even worse when working with complex files or large-scale projects.

My question is: Wouldn’t it be possible for After Effects to automatically preserve opacity values when converting Illustrator layers to shapes? This would significantly speed up the process and eliminate the need for manual fixes or third-party plugins like Overlord (which is a great example of how the After Effects/Illustrator integration should work natively).

Once again, I appreciate your attention and hope this discussion leads to an improvement in this feature, as this is a common concern among UX Motion Designers.

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Warren Heaton

Community Expert

@Olavo Ramos

Open the Adobe Illustrator file in Adobe XD, select all, then use File > Export > After Effects.

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Olavo RamosAuthor

Participant

I’d LOVE to test this out and get to know if the files work, but unfortunately, my Mac doesn’t support Adobe XD (I’m running macOS Monterey 12.7.6).

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Warren Heaton

Community Expert

Hello @Olavo Ramos

If using File > Import as Footage or Composition, you should notice that the Transparency value set for an object in an Illustrator file is maintained, but shows as 100% for the corresponding After Effects Opacity Layer Property. As such, the Ai transparency value is what we might call "baked in". And yes, ideally the Opacity value on the After Effects side would match the Transparency value on the Illustrator side so that we could easily increase or decrease it as needed while animating without being limited by the locked in transparency.

You can switch to two other approaches to working with Illustrator and After Effects to get the Opacity setting on the Ae side to match the Transparency setting on the Ai side:

In Illustrator, use File > Export... and export the Artboard as a Layered Photoshop document. Be sure to release any Illustrator objects to their own layer at the root level of the document prior to doing this. While this will match the Opacity value to Transparency value, it rasterizes the artwork.
Open the Illustrator file in Adobe XD, select the Objects to be send to After Effects, and then use File > Export > After Effects. The Opacity property of the resulting Shape Layers in the After Effects Composition will match the Transparency of the corresponding Illustrator Objects.

Another approach is to import the Illustrator file as Footage and then use Layer > Create > Create Shapes from Vector Layer, but the Opacity will be 100% and need to be manually set to match Illustrator. Even though this is some futz work, it opens it up to using the Shape Transform Opacity rather than the Layer Opacity.

Of course, you could always bring each Object up to 100% in Illustrator and do something like including the intended Opacity in the Ai document Layer name, import the Ai file as a Composition, and then manually adjust the Opacity property for each Layer as needed.

If frequently working between Illustrator and After Effects, be sure to check out Overloard 2 ($75) by Battle Axe.

- Warren

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Kevin J. Monahan Jr.

Legend

Hi @Olavo Ramos,

Thanks for the message and welcome to the forum. I had a play and found I could create an Illustrator file with transparency involved and succeeded in importing that into After Effects using a PNG. Perhaps if you detailed your workflow or provided a test file, we could help more. Is that possible? Let us know. I hope we can assist.

Thanks,
Kevin

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Kevin Monahan - Sr. Community and Engagement Strategist – Adobe Pro Video and Audio

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