Importing Illustrator artwork outside the artboard to after effects without cropping

[flawlessking]

I am creating a landscape in illustrator which "stretches out beyond artboard", I need to import this in after effects without the artwork getting cropped(including the artwork as whole). How it can be done? Up till now I use to create high resolution artwork in Illustrator i.e 2000x4000 pixel, and than importing it into after effects (1920x1080 comp) and scale it there to animate. But it creates the comp unnecessarily heavy…any work around? thanks would appreciate a quick response.

[Martin_Ritter]

What is not on the AI artboard, won't be there in AE - it is that simple. So you either scale your artwork until it completely fits on the artboard, or your enlarge your artboard until it covers all the artwork.

There is no need to work with large comps in AE if your artwork is full vector. Just scale the artwork down in AI to 1920px. You can freely scale it in AE if you need it. Just don't forget to activate continuous rasterization on all layers and comps involved.

If you have rasterized parts in your artwork, you have to work with large comps. No workaround here if you don't want quality loss.

*Martin

[Roei Tzoref]

create another artboard that is big enough to contain all your artwork. keep the original artboard and don't change the order of the artboards since Ae will pick up the 1st artboard as the composition dimensions which is what you want. save the file. now in Ae you can move the artwork and won't see it cropped.

FYI the HD preset in illustrator comes with 2 artboards by default, that resolves any of these issues. 

[matthewH&H]

Thanks Roei, you're the hero we needed!

[Riccardo26348976jzug]

OMFG it works!!

[mz_avis]

You're genius! It even works if you've already imported your AI file and want to get the cropped areas back!

[reinko]

I have used this with success in the past, however today it's not working as it should. Does anyone know what the original settings for importing the AI file should be for this to work? 

[reinko]

It seems to be Composition - Retain layer sizes. It won't work with Footage or Composition. 

[Neko_Artemis]

GENIUS!!! it didn't mantain the background position so I had to manually adjust but it has saved me a lot of time and headachess!!!!!!!!! thank you so much!

[ghaida_omari]

awesome thank you 

[Loriba]

Just double click on the area and then you can drag the artboard from the corners to uncover your artwork. If you're having problems selecting it, just lock the other ones 

[David_at_Summit]

I stumbled across an odd characteristic that you may be able to use to your advantage. While After Effects is not fully compatible with Illustrator artboards, it does seem to consistently import only from the bottom (last ordered) artboard. Therefore, if you have an Illustrator layout that you use for other things, like exporting to JPEG or linking in other documents, you can simply add a separate, overlapping, bottom artboard which encompasses all of the artwork and still use the other artboard(s) for those purposes.

What I mean by "After Effects is not fully compatible with Illustrator artboards" is that when you have more than one artboard, you cannot select which one to import the graphics from. The Illustrator feature of multiple artboards was added a long time ago. You'd think other Adobe applications would have all caught-up by now. What I mean by "odd characteristic" is that most Adobe applications not fully compatible with Illustrator artboards will only import Illustrator artwork from the top (first ordered) artboard instead of the bottom.

[MARKFRANCOMBE@GMAIL.COM]

Theres a simple solution to this. And its a fix EVEN if you have already started animating layers in After Effects. Sometimes altering things in illustrator after animating can be dangerous, but this is NOT one of those times.
Simply open the illustrator file in illustrator, go to Objects > Artboards > Fit to Artwork bounds.

This will increast the size of the artboard to beyond all your graphics layers and when you save and go back to AE, the layers will NOT be cut off.

Mark

[brookeh5804754]

I've always used the HD presets as mentioned by Roei above but for some reason this time I used the web 1920 x 1080 preset and ran into the layers being cropped. "Fit to Artwork" bounds saved the day. Thanks!