Imported Illustrator shapes with gradients turning gray after creating shapes from vector layer in After Effects

I discovered an interesting bug the other day (April 2024) when importing an AI file with gradients into AE. The answer was to save the AI file as an old version - I used Illustrator Version 8, and that seemed to work! Here's the bug report I filed with the details of the problem - and solution:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/after-effects-bugs/glitches-holes-appearing-on-imported-illustrator-file-with-gradient-stroke/idi-p/14548953#M9728

A completely free and efficient fix for importing shapes with gradients is:
Open vector file in Figma -> Use free AEUX plugin -> Send to  After Effects.

You might need to readjust some gradients in Figma, but it's way better than managing all of them in AE. 
My trick is to use solid colors in Illustrator and recreate the shades in Figma, with a screenshot reference.
You don't need the battleaxe overlord paid plugin.

If you have a very complex Illustrator layer that needs to be converted to a shape layer, you can bring the file into Adobe XD and immediately export it as an After Effects project. If the AI file has only one or two layers that need to be converted, the most efficient approach is to remove those other layers first.

Here's the workflow. 

1. Clean up your AI file
2. Launch Adobe XD and choose New File
3. From the file menu, choose Import and select your cleaned-up AI file
4. Before doing anything else, choose File/Export/After Effects
5. After Effects will open if it is not open already, and a new comp will be created with every element of the AI file as a vector layer that you can animate

That's it. To make this workflow efficient, you need to make sure that any layers that do not need to be converted to shape layers so you can use shape layer animators or extrude them or animate the paths have been removed. You can easily end up with a couple hundred layers and dozens of nested comps if you import complex files.

I also run into the same kinda problem.. and I actually solved it surprisingly, I first download a character online and re-created the whole thing again, but I was still maintaining the gradients from the character which was used for the shadow link to the character https://www.instagram.com/p/Chs0-GXszF8/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link I imported it to After Effect when I was done with the Layering, but the shadows weren't showing as it shows on illustrator, which was the gradients. I did all the necessary changes, changing the color mode to RGB same as the illustrator, and still didn't work. My research brought me here and as l was reading the replies it hit my mind to try something out by changing the blending mode, I did it and it worked. I literally got the shadows showing exactly as it was in illustrator, by changing the blending mode to 

"multiply"

I had some spot colors, once I switched them to process colors all my gradients came in just fine, maybe that will help!

Hey! I was facing the same issue for quite some time and thought I'd need to recreate the gradient again but there is a way! I fixed it by applying a gradient overlay over the vector shape, found under layer styles > Gradient Overlay. If you want to apply the gradient as a fill, apply the gradient overlay on the shape layer itself and if you want it as a stroke, copy and paste the gradient overlay effect onto the shape path. You can carry on copy pasting the effect on any path/shape similarly. I hope it helps! 

I'm having this same issue. I swear I've gotten gradient strokes to import into AE before, but I've tried everything, and not getting them to import in 2019. I do have the Overlord extension, and it seems import them fine if you have that, unfortunately I'm making a tutorial so that won't work in this case.

The one other solution I can offer, is if you're just doing something like you want to use Trim Paths in AE, you can import the layer, convert it to shapes, apply trim paths to the greyed out shapes, and use that layer as an alpha matte to your original layer with the gradients. (be sure to continuously rasterize the AE layer.

The command to create shapes from vector graphics does not preserve gradients or many other aspects of an Illustrator document.

The bits of advice that you mention are related to importing Illustrator documents; they have nothing to do with this conversion to shape layers.