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theresiah
Participant
June 4, 2020
Answered

Copying/Exporting from After Effects to Illustrator

  • June 4, 2020
  • 2 replies
  • 26465 views

Hi,

 

I recently did a project in After Effects and without thinking too much I drew out all text and all shapes within after effects directly. Now I have a requirement to send the same layout to print and would like to find the quickest way to get all text from text layers and shapes from shape layers into Illustrator. But I can't seem to find a way to do it and googling only gives results for going from Illustrator to After Effects, not the other way around. I know I messed up, but it would be great to not have to redo everything from scratch because it took almost a week.

 

Any help would be appreciated!

    Correct answer Rick Gerard

    There is no export to AI. You can copy paths and paste them to Illustrator but none of the modified properties of the paths will be brought in. No fill, no stroke, no position, scale, or other values will be brought from After Effects to Illustrator. I don't know of any script that will help. 

     

    Your best option would be to export a frame as a Layered PSD file, import that to Illustrator, then start tracing.

     

    2 replies

    Travis Schmidt Art
    Travis Schmidt Art
    Participant
    July 21, 2021

    This response may be a little late, but theres a plug in called Overlord that can push shape layer art from AE to AI and back. It's pretty useful and based on your question, may be what you need.

    I hope this isn't too late for you XD

      D
      Dean23233291j36d
      Participating Frequently
      July 1, 2022

      Thanks. I even forgot I had that plugin. I couldn't get it to work from AE to AI. Has anyone else had luck exporting a path from After Effects to Illustrator? I tried with a shape layer path and a mask path. Neither worked. 

      R
      Community Expert
      Rick GerardCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
      Community Expert
      June 4, 2020

      There is no export to AI. You can copy paths and paste them to Illustrator but none of the modified properties of the paths will be brought in. No fill, no stroke, no position, scale, or other values will be brought from After Effects to Illustrator. I don't know of any script that will help. 

       

      Your best option would be to export a frame as a Layered PSD file, import that to Illustrator, then start tracing.

       

        T
        theresiahAuthor
        Participant
        June 4, 2020

        Thank you Rick, it's as I feared then. Safe to say, I will never make that mistake again :).

         

        Have a nice day!

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