I bought an .eps file on shutterstock (probably made in Illustrator) and I was wondering if I can animate this in after effects as a kind of continuous wave in loop of about 10-20sec. When I convert the file to shape layers I come up with over 1000 groups, which means that every dot becomes a shape. Does anyone know how to handle this?
Converting to shape layers is going to be a mess. I would suggest opening the EPS in Illustrator, then arranging the different colors on different layers, trying to straighten them out if you can, then importing as a comp, retaining layer size, opening the comp, and applying distortion effects to the layers to create your looping wave.
You might be better off recreating something like the illustration you bought in Illustrator, setting up some blends, and then using this kind of workflow to create animated paths from the blends. This workflow is very old, but I still use it once in a while:
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