Can you connect shapes such as in Illustrator?

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
July 18, 2019
2 replies
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In Illustrator, you can set any anchor points of different paths in same place, for example you can "connect" corners of two rectangles just by dragging them. Is there a way to do so in After Effects?

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Correct answer Warren Heaton

It sounds like you're talking about how Illustrator behaves when Smart Guides is enabled. It would be absolutely amazing if AE had Smart Guides as well.

A path vertex (a "point" in Illustrator) will snap to a Guide, so you could draw a vertical guide and horizontal guide and then have a vertex from more than one path snap to where those guides intersect; however, that isn't even a close second to Smart Guides. Furthermore, guides won't snap to a vertex.

I find it easier to just draw in Illustrator and then either copy and paste to AE (usually to get a Mask, but AI paths can be pasted to a variety of places in AE) or import the AI file and convert that to Shape Layer.

You could also try Overlord (https://www.battleaxe.co/overlord) that creates "a portal between Illustrator and After Effects". I hear great things about it, but haven't used it.

-Warren

Warren Heaton

Correct answer

Community Expert

It sounds like you're talking about how Illustrator behaves when Smart Guides is enabled. It would be absolutely amazing if AE had Smart Guides as well.

A path vertex (a "point" in Illustrator) will snap to a Guide, so you could draw a vertical guide and horizontal guide and then have a vertex from more than one path snap to where those guides intersect; however, that isn't even a close second to Smart Guides. Furthermore, guides won't snap to a vertex.

I find it easier to just draw in Illustrator and then either copy and paste to AE (usually to get a Mask, but AI paths can be pasted to a variety of places in AE) or import the AI file and convert that to Shape Layer.

You could also try Overlord (https://www.battleaxe.co/overlord) that creates "a portal between Illustrator and After Effects". I hear great things about it, but haven't used it.

-Warren

M

MikeHoium

Known Participant

If you use Illustrator alot with After Effects Overlord is a must.

Make stuff in Illustrator, click one button and it is instantly a shape layer in After Effects. Click one button and you art is back in Illustrator to edit, one button back in After Effects.

R

Rick Gerard

Community Expert

The vertices on a shape layer or a mask will snap to a guide or grid, but they will not snap to another vertex (point). A layer's anchor point will snap to a grid, guide, layer boundary, path edge or point (vertex). If I had a job where I needed to animate a point and make it line up with another point I would use the Points follow Nulls tool from the Create Nulls From Paths panel. You can open it using the Window Menu. Select the path, run the tool, then turn on snapping and move the appropriate null to the appropriate layer boundary, anchor point, or point on any vector path.

That is a point attached to a null snapping to a shape layer path. If your shapes were freeform that would be much easier than trying to set up a bunch of guides.