Disappearing Illustrator Layers/Assets, AE CS5

Report · Jan 27, 2011

Hey guys,

First my specs, just in case:

MAC OSX 10.6.6

AE CS5 10.0.1.19

8-Core

24 GB RAM

I'm having the strangest issues with adobe illustrator layers in my timeline... they keep disappearing at random moments during playback. Somtimes its during RAM preview, somtimes its when I'm scrubbing the timeline, but never at the same point and it doesn't seem to be consistant for which layers dissapear or appear. To be clear, the layers themselves are not disappearing in the timeline, but in my active view/camera.

There are 13 illustrator layers, all of them are 3D Layers. I have, at various points, been able to see all of my layers when they should appear on screen, so Its not an issue of a layer getting in the way of my camera and obscuring anything (i don't think). It's not an opacity issue... It seems to be something with my illustrator files and CS5. I've even tried moving the files over to a different machine, and I've tried opening up the project on a Windows box, but the problem persists. I'm truly puzzled.

Its not the biggest issue at the moment, as long as I can get a clean playback in AE for my client this evening, but I'm scared to continue working only to find that I can't render out any of my final project to broadcast.

Anyone have any clues? I'll post updates as needed.

Thanks in advance,

Dylan

Report · Jan 25, 2012

i'm using CS5.5 and i had the same problem... Some layers dissapeared, others were half visible (seemed to be cut). Changing AE setting didn't help, only saving the AI file without compression worked out, at least for now. Pity that AE developers haven't fixed that bug in CS5.5, since it already appeared in CS5

Report · Mar 01, 2012

There was a known issue with layers disappearing when Render Multiple Frames was turned on that was fixed in AE CS5.5, but this could be a different issue. Can you send in the project with the illustrator file in a bug report here? Mark it attention Will Lockwood and I will take a look.

https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform

Report · Aug 29, 2012

I have found the genesis of our problems. I first noticed this on a project where I was using Illustrator (CS5) artwork supplied by a designer. He was using the "Film/Video" presets to make an HD formatted AI file. I liked how handy the grids and title safeties were so I kept using the preset on other projects. Thats when I started noticing artwork disappearing. I had to purge it at multiple points in my timeline just to get a render out.

When I read richardbwallace's idea to look for the second artboard and delete it, everything clicked into place. Instantly everything came back. I have a feeling that Adobe needed to add that artboard to make something in the film and video presets to work the way they do and didn't anticipate or test for this issue.

I have not checked if other presets use the same double artboard trick, but if one of them does, I bet it will cause the same problems.

tl;dr - Video and Film presets in AI add extra artboards which cause the issue.

Report · Sep 12, 2012

CS6 Illustrator layers interface (labels and icons) - appear / disappear

1. Open layer panel

2. Double click layer icon above the affected layer(s) object(s) that do not show in the layers panel

3. Enable print

Layer interface data re-appears. This influence cascades to any layers & objects below toggled layer print/noprint

Further testing for the tech boys

Creat New Document
Create Box inside artboard
Create layer 2 - make box inside artboard.
Dble click 2 disble print. only that layer is affected
Enable print on layer 2
Create a rectangle on layer 2 that spans the artboard and beyond the art board
Disable print on layer 2 - all layers below go blank
Enable print on layer 2 - layers below reappear
Delete the spanning box
Disable print layer 2 - layers all disappear. its like it remembers the object outside the artboard and continues with the bug

anyway I have other things to do today ... so fix it Adobe

Report · Sep 14, 2013

I'm having the same problem. Running Illustrator CC on a MacPro 2 x 3GHz Dual core Xeon, 8GB RAM system 10.7.5. At the same time the Mac also slows down. Some files are fine one day, then the contents of the layers palette disappears the next.

Report · Sep 16, 2013

I have now reverted to CS6 and the problem has gone away.

I can only assume that it's a preferences problem. I would appreciate advice on which files to trash. Does a clean install work with CC?

Report · Sep 18, 2013

I now have a fix for this plus the problem of the inability to log into the cloud. The two seem to be related. The fix is here; http://helpx.adobe.com/creative-cloud/kb/unknown-server-error-launching-cc.html

Going through their trouble shooting plus deleting the Illustrator 17 preference files in the application support AND the preferences folder is necessary to perform a complete fix.

Report · Sep 21, 2014

What worked for me was to turn off Motion Blur for those layers.

Report · Jan 08, 2016

This seems to be an old issue that has just occurred for me in AE CC 2015 so does that mean that the bug has not been fixed?

Re-saving the illustrator file and un-ticking "use compression" also worked for me. I wasting a lot of time figuring this out so would be good if suddenly layers in AE didn't just disappear.

Report · Aug 28, 2016

Maan this bug is till going on, lot's of reports, several solutions, none one really solid.

It's not professional at all that what you see in the RAM preview later goes away in the final render, you can't work this way!

What worked for me was setting the Z position to -1, and also rasterization off but maybe next week it will be something else right? Come on Adobe, it's a known bug going on for years!

I suspect the only thing we all have in common is that where animating 3D layer, I will consider animating 2D layer with nulls just scale and position.

Tim Williams what does this problem has to do with the cloud? I also notice that my dynamic link server is broken but that shouldn't affect a render right?

Report · May 08, 2017

Well its May of 2017, same problems!
Adobe keep on Increasing they prices 3d time in 2 years, trying hard to fix this Bugs, I guess.
The way I have fixed this is changing your resterized layer in to 3D......... No logic behind this..... worked for me

thanks Adobe for ehhhh something..... you do I guess
PS (Bring fast blur back in to the same place!)

Report · May 11, 2017

SOLUTION:

Right click on vector layer / Create shapes from vector layer.

It worked for me

Report · May 11, 2017

As long as you're using a version of AE that supports Shapes, lluísm offers a great tip.

Over the decades, I've found it helpful to go back to Illustrator and export to a layered Photoshop file when AI source footage does not behave as expected in AE. Depending how far along you are in animated, you can import the layered PS as a Comp or replace each AI layer with its corresponding PS layer. Of course, Continuously Rasterize will no longer work if you're using that. If you happen to be scaling an AI layer to 500%, you'll have to scale that artwork in AI 500% and save that as a PS files as well (which will then be 100% on the AE side).

Prior to exporting to PS, you'll probably want to release your AI objects and sub-layers to layers and then promote them to the root level of the document (which you might already be doing).

To export a layered AI to a layered PS file:

Choose File > Export > Export As > Format: Photoshop (psd). Set the Color Model to RGB (if using an older version of AI, you'll have to continued in CMYK and convert to RGB in PS before importing in to AE) and the Resolution to Screen (72 ppi) with Write Layers checked.

-Warren

Report · Oct 11, 2018

Same Issue still in 2018.
An AI file with multiple layers as composition (3D) scaled up to around 300% works fine in the hole composition, but 2 frames.

Reopendan CC2017 project, that did fine. Edited some changes in text layers and done.
But now one layer, starting in the middle of the comp misses 2 frames at the beginning.

No keyframes at that position, no effects just motion blur and full rasterize active.
The layer disappears only in full resolution, appears if full rasterize is off, 3D is turned off or if going to half res.
Tried purge memory, no change.
I tried to move the layer by two frames to trim of the missing two frames, but at the same position still, two frames do not show up.

Tried to move layers inside ai pre-comp by two frames, the same result.

Tried to reorder layers, no change.

Tried to change camera position, no change.

Tried to reload footage on all ai layers, no change.

Tried purge memory again, no change.

Fixed problem by extending the previous layer by two frames. So did not solve it, but changed the edit instead.

So the difference is only slightly and therefore ok.
I know several workarounds including using matching sizes of ai files, but since everything worked fine

But there should be a pro-solution for this.

CC2018 actual build, windows 7 64bit

Report · Oct 11, 2018

My AI-AE workflow is to use overlord (https://www.battleaxe.co/overlord/) and explode shape layers (Explode Shape Layers 3 - aescripts + aeplugins - aescripts.com)

Those two in combination make working with AI files in AE a joy.

Report · Oct 13, 2018

Looks like a nice tool.

Report · Feb 02, 2019

I had the same issue too with Illustrator art disappearing when rendered. The one thing seems to fix it is to "Create Shape from Vector Layer". Once that's done, my artwork shows up perfectly fine in my rendered file. Hope this will help.

Report · Mar 26, 2021

This had me pulling my hair out and panicking (and good to know this bug is still an issue ten whole years later, thanks Adobe). Purging my cache actually made it worse for me — almost all my Illustrator files disappeared. After that, I went through and changed all comps and pre-comps to the same frame rate (10 fps — I'm doing a stop-motion style thing). No change. FINALLY, at long last, what worked: Duplicated my AI file, unclicked the "compress" box (you see if after go through the first menu screen about where to save your file); and then I had to go through and replace the footage for each individual layer, which took forever since I had dozens of them. Make sure that if the layers were originally imported to preserve layer size, you do that again when you're replacing footage; if you go with document size, they won't show up.