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R
Romero5C1F
Participant
April 16, 2021
Answered

Illustrator file crashing After Effects 2021

  • April 16, 2021
  • 2 replies
  • 2534 views

Hi everyone!

I've been working all week animating an AI file in AE, and it has been smooth until today around noon when AE froze out of nothing. I restarted AE, but now the project file won't load. It hangs up at 52%. Around then I got the notification that CC was updated. Not the Apps, just CC. I re-started the computer and the problem persisted. I opened other AE files with no problem, but none of the backups of the project I was working on will open. 

I purged the memory and disk cache, re-started the machine several times, did all the basic stuff. No success.

I think I isolated the problem by renaming the AI file and reopening the AE project. Now the project loads fine, and so do the backpus, but the AI is disconnected. When I try to reconnect the Illustrator file, AE freezes again.

When I open the AI file in Illustrator it opens fine. No problems there. So, neither file appear to be corrupted.

Then I created a new AE project and tried to import the AI file to start again, and the file took a very long time to load, and when it did no image showed up. 

It's like After Effects doesn't like Illustrator files anymore. Which is ridiculous, I know.

I've already been working on this animation the whole week. Already got some reviews, fixes, and some stuff aproved. The deadline is tomorrow and there's still a lot to be done, and here I am stuck all day with a file that won't work even if I start from scratch. 

I thought of changing to a photoshop file, but there isn't a straight way to convert Illustrator files to psd.

If anyone knows what's going on here, please help!

Specs:

Macbook Pro with over 1T of space available on my SSD, 32GB of RAM, and AMD Radeon Pro 5500M 8 GB.

No external drives or cloud files on this project.

AI and AE 2021.

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer Romero5C1F

    Oh cool, @ItsKnowOne ! Maybe I'll try that next time.

    Since I was pressed for time I endup buuuying a scrit extension. Imagine that!

    With the extension my workflow had to change quite a bit. In all fairness the script can be a huge time saver for many tasks, but the change on workflow is a setback for sure. For that project I lost my night of sleep.

    I miss a simple back and forth between AE and AI that just works... like it does with PS.

    Oh well... At the end the extension took me out of a very tight situation and I find myself going back to it just to avoid ever getting put on the spot again.

    The extension is called Overlord. By Battleaxe. https://www.battleaxe.co/overlord

    It's worth the $45 it costs.

    Cheers!

    2 replies

    ItsKnowOne
    ItsKnowOne
    Participating Frequently
    August 19, 2021

    This exact thing has been happening to me. I feel like once you make an illustrator file and save it. Import it into After Effects, you can no longer make changes and save the initial illustrator file otherwise it will cause crashes. After Effects has really fallen apart over the years. Can't believe how many third party plugins I have to install to make my life easier.

    ItsKnowOne
    ItsKnowOne
    Participating Frequently
    August 19, 2021

    I am on a PC. I just updated to the latest version of AE hoping it would fix this issue.

    R
    Romero5C1FAuthor
    Participant
    April 16, 2021

    Oh! MacOS Catalina

    ItsKnowOne
    ItsKnowOne
    Participating Frequently
    August 19, 2021

    Wow, one thing I just found out that might be the fix is that when you save the Illustrator file, make sure to turn on Create PDF Compatible File. When I did that, my file stopped crashing in AE and loaded. I haven't started working in the project much but it at least didn't crash.

     

    Hope this helps you!

      R
      Romero5C1FAuthorCorrect answer
      Participant
      August 20, 2021

      Oh cool, @ItsKnowOne ! Maybe I'll try that next time.

      Since I was pressed for time I endup buuuying a scrit extension. Imagine that!

      With the extension my workflow had to change quite a bit. In all fairness the script can be a huge time saver for many tasks, but the change on workflow is a setback for sure. For that project I lost my night of sleep.

      I miss a simple back and forth between AE and AI that just works... like it does with PS.

      Oh well... At the end the extension took me out of a very tight situation and I find myself going back to it just to avoid ever getting put on the spot again.

      The extension is called Overlord. By Battleaxe. https://www.battleaxe.co/overlord

      It's worth the $45 it costs.

      Cheers!

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