Importing from Procreate

Question

There does not seem to be a way to import any of the Procreate export options into AE. The most likely option (because it has an option for transparent background)  is called Animated PNG, a format I have not seen before. I'm using a new Macbook pro and the Animated PNG does play from the finder by pressing the space bar but not by opening it in Preview even though all the frames (layers) are there.  When I import it into anything and I have tried AE, Premier, Quicktime and VLC player but all you get is the first frame appearing in the timeline. The only way I have found is to export all the layers as a sequenced image file, but I must flatten all the layers and it's a very laborious process. Of course, I have written to Procreate to ask if they can in the future develop other export options, but I also wanted to see if this Animated PNG is one that can be opened as a moving image file at some point?

Mylenium · Accepted Answer

There is officially no such thing as "Animated PNG". It's a hack based on a proposal the W3C, the authority watching over web standards, never adopted. And there you have it. This format is merely exploiting some features that exist in the PNG spec, anyway (multiple draw regions/ canvases, faux "layers" by ways of same feature, custom data chunks etc.), but the interpretation of that data is entirely up to the programs that create these types of images or others that care to support it for whatever ulterior motive. Based on that, things like blending modes or layer groups aren't even in the spec and even assuming AE had basic support for this format would not necessarily come through looking the same is in the original program that created them. So for what it's worth, this format is useless in a professional context and yes, annoying as it may be, animated sequences are your only option if they offer no other export options. Again, this is one giant hack and it eludes me why they haven't bothered to fix it by supporting a proper PSD export or something like that, given that they claim to address "Pros" in the first place...

Mylenium

stollinger · Answer

hi everyone,I have been working a lot with Procreate and AfterEffects in the last few years. The way I feel is the least painful one is using .psd as exchange format. In my case the frame-by-frame Animations are included as elements in animation films and the main task is how to bring them into your timeline without losing too much time.It is crucial that the drawn animations you bring in have to use a framerate which is a fraction of you main framerate. (It's called animating on ones / twos / threes / fours) This is the only way you can create smooth loops within a Comp that uses a different framerate.I was really annoyed of "stacking layers" because I am using a lot of handdrawn elements and I want to quickly tryout other Framerates (e.g. animation on threes instead of twos). So I created the script "CelMate" to automate the process. If your animations are within a folder, it appears as a precomp in After Effects. Just select one or more of those precomps, choose the fps you want to go for and hit "Create Sequence". (The script makes sure that your main FPS matches)Check it out on gumroad, it's free!stollinski.gumroad.com/l/jvhdo

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