importing an illustrator file to after effects

To import your Illustrator file with layers into After Effects, choose "Composition - Retain Layer Sizes" in the import options. Ensure your Illustrator file is properly organized with elements on separate layers. For more guidance, check out riztagar.com for top tutorials on this topic.

Your problem assumes that you actually created layers in Illustrator, which you may not have done.

Very few regular Illustrator users do this.

There are several ways to do this:

Convert: Right Click Layer > Create > Create Shapes from Vector Layer

Copy Paths: Select shape in Illustrator > Copy > Paste onto new After Effects Solid to create Path

Better methods use Paid 3rd party tools:

Overlord: https://www.battleaxe.co/overlord

- Does a fantastic job of maintaining shapes, position, colors, and layout when exporting from Illustrator to AE.

Explode Shape Layers 3: https://aescripts.com/explode-shape-layers/

- Great tool for exploding shape layers after converted in AE and merging layers do you don't have hundreds of unnecessary layers in dense projects, and you don't have to manually copy/paste solo shapes in each duplicate layer.