Creating Shapes From Vector Layer Crashing After Effects

[Joelooo]

I'm creating assets within Illustrator so I can then animate them within After Effects however when it comes to clicking the create shapes from vector layer it takes a long process (the bar is not going up or down, not even percentage is showing for near completion - image to show)

I've clicked the skip button, however, this just seems to crash After Effects nearly everything I click it says "Not Responding", or just takes too long to switch back and forth.

Is there a solution to this, I've recently tried uninstalling and reinstalling?

[Rick Gerard · Accepted solution]

Unless you need to use shape animators like trim paths, or actually animate the vector path, there is no reason or advantage to converting a vector layer to a shape layer. This is especially true if you have complicated illustrator files containing hundreds of paths.

Every object you create an illustrator that needs to be animated should be on a separate layer. Any vector path you must convert to a shape layer should also be on a separate layer in AI and clearly labeled. Unfortunately, if you have hundreds of shape layers, or hundreds of objects in a single shape layer, AE will slow down. If you start approaching 1000, after effects will most likely hang up or crash. On the other hand, AE can't handle hundreds and hundreds of objects on a single vector layer with no problem. 

[Mylenium]

What Rick already said. Ever since the feature was introduced, people completely misunderstand its purpose and usage. It's an option, not mandatory. And in your case it may simply boil down to the simple fact that maps of all kinds usually have hundreds and thousands of anchor points that may either simply exhaust all resources or even hit hard internal limits and thus cause the conversion to fail or produce unusable results. at the very least you should check your map in Illustrator and possibly reorganize it, remove "garbage" like stray anchor points and redundant unconnected segments and all the usual stuff. There also appears to be a white drop shadow. If it's based on the filter it won't convert, anyway, if it's based on a blend it will just by itself produce a bunch of thousand extra shapes, which will make AE crash upon trying to convert it. See? It's not as weasy as lobbing any graphic at AE without preparation.

Mylenium

[Антон22535722zogr]

Hi! I also had this kind of problem. And here a solution.

After creating shape from vector u need to click on it and open menu with 'contents' and 'transform', click on the 'contents', there would be group 1, group 2..., So now click on any of those groups and u will see 'group 1' again. Finally, just delete it. Repeat those steps for group 2, group 3 and others.

I know it's hard to understand me but I hope you got me right and its helped you:)