Exporting Animation with shadow layer transparency

Question

I did not realize while building out my animation that a layer's opacity property was only an author tool and would not render/export out the same way. As soon as I bring the SWF or MOV file into After Effects, my shadow layers are back to 100% opacity.

I've seen some solutions mentioning movie clips, but this is a traditional style animation where every key frame and inbetween is drawn, so I'm not sure if that process would work. So far I haven't gotten it to work properly with my keyframes.

Does anyone know another solution to this? It seems kind of ridiculous if Animate does not have the capability to export layers at a lower opacity.

Mario_CR · Accepted Answer

This is so strange - I'm doing exactly what you've described, but I still lose the shadows.

Here's a screen recording:

https://youtu.be/ohzPVBvHLV0

However, I'd forgotten that I had gone through and changed the fill alpha of every frame in scene - I guess that is the solution when not using symbols. I just tried it on the other scene and it worked for exporting both the SWF and mp4.

Thank you for all of your help!

Ah it's because you're converting it into a Movie Clip symbol; forgot to say it has to be a Graphic symbol.

Movie Clips are for developers, they don't play on stage, Graphics do. For purely animation purposes remember to use Graphic symbols only.

Mario_CR · Answer

Hi, converting the layer into a symbol should work regardless if it's frame animated or not. Here's how to do it:

Select your "shadow" layer > right click > Convert Layers to symbol.

Once done go to the properties panel (object tab) and select Alpha under Color Effects to lower the oppacity.

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