Autotrace won't work anymore

[-Aperture-]

Hello,

this morning I used the Autotrace funktion in After Effects. As I want to use it in the afternoon, it will not work anymore. Is it possible, that I shift some adjustment so that this happened? The window for the Autotrace still opens, but neither in the preview, nor after I confirm the settings is there any mask.

Do you have any idea? Thanks for your help!

[Mylenium]

You have not provided any essential info, so at this point we can't help you. Version of AE, system info, current auto-trace settings, type of footage used etc..

Mylenium

[-Aperture-]

Sorry, this is my first question here.

It's the latest CC Version of After Effects on a Windows 10 Professional System. The Current auto-trace settings are default I think (I don't think I changed something) and the type of footage is a PNG-Logo, but the JPEG-Version does not work either.

[Rick Gerard]

It sounds like you do not have the appropriate layer selected or there is too little information on that layer.

[-Aperture-]

I select the pre-composed Logo layer with a click and go than to Layer -> Auto-trace. Normally that works perfect, and I have also used this Logo without problems before.

Further I just noticed, that other functions like the Vegas Animation do also not work. There is also no mask.

[-Aperture-]

Is there nobody who can help me?

I reinstalled the programm yesterday, after that it worked again, but now the problem is back again. How can this happen?

[Rick Gerard]

depending on the layer AutoTrace is a real resource hog and you could easily be running out of resources. My first approach to solving the problem would be to create a new comp with just the layer you are trying to trace, run Auto Trace and see how that works. You can always copy and paste the layer that is created in another comp.

If you are trying to get mask paths from the shapes in a logo there are a lot more efficient ways to approach the problem. It would be awfully unusual for me trace a logo in AE. I would use Illustrator or Photoshop to generate my vectors because the tools are so much better there. It would not only give you a better trace but it would be faster. The best option would be to get a vector copy of the logo and separate that into layers in AI before bringing it into AE as a comp.

The only time I have used AutoTrace in the last year was to generate some mask paths for part of a movie. I first duplicated the layer, applied some serious and extreme color correction to get some really good edges, pre-composed, then auto traced the doctored video, then deleted the pre-comp layer in the main comp and used the animated masks.

I hope this helps.

[-Aperture-]

Thanks for your answer, but it looks like the problem is a bigger one. Even when I use effects without tracing it won't work, e.g. when I try to use the Vegas-Effect.

I also think that it is no problem of resources, because my task manager shows no big use of resources. And I just checked, if I use the AI file I've got the same problem. For me it seems as if AE is unable to detect the edges of the logo.

[Rick Gerard]

If your AE is up to date and your system is compatible then there should be none of the bugs you describe. I suspect it is a graphics driver issue. You might try turning off any hardware acceleration or updating your GPU drivers. This is where a little system info helps us diagnose your problems.

[-Aperture-]

I've just reinstalled the latest version of GPU driver. The problem is still there.

My system configuration is:

Windows 10 Professional (64 bit)

Intel i7-6700HQ

16GB RAM

512GB SSD (with programs and files)

1TB HD (just for rare used files or old files before I copy them to a external hard drive)

Nvidia Geforce GTX 950M & Intel hd graphics 530 (the settings are set so that the Nvidia graphics card is preferred)

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi -Aperture-,

Did you ever get this issue solved? Did our experts help you solve it? Let us know.

Thanks,
Kevin

[Lazy34619567ih3l]

For  me it worked when I selected Aplha on the channel dropdown, try messing with those