Is it possible to stroke an image and hide the original art from showing?

[GBoyd]

Hi all,

To clarify what the subject line is asking. I would like to know how I can bring in a shape made in Illustrator, apply a stroke to that shape, and hide the shape from view so that only the stroke is visible. Much like how in Photoshop you can apply a Layer Style and then set that layer's Fill value to 0 so that you only see the effects of the Layer Style and not the original artwork on that layer.

Is this possible?

So far everything I've tried that hides the original image, also hides the stroke.

[Justin Taylor-Hyper Brew]

Sure, just disable the Fill property

[GBoyd]

That seems great for shapes drawn in After Effects, but I don't see a fill property on any images I import into After Effects. Does it exist somewhere else in the interface for these types of objects?

[Justin Taylor-Hyper Brew]

Are you converting your AI graphics to shapes first?

[Justin Taylor-Hyper Brew]

If not, convert them with "Convert Shapes from Vector Layer"

[GBoyd]

I haven't converted them. Not all artwork I'm importing will be out of Illustrator though, but this looks like it'll work for the files that are. Thanks!

[Ali Jaber · Accepted solution]

It is exactly the same process as in Photoshop: right-click on the layer and choose layer styles > stroke:

In the timeline set the stroke properties as you like, in the layer styles > blending options, set the fill opacity to 0:

[GBoyd]

Perfect! Thank you so much. I'm picking up alot of things in this program, but I'm finding that it's so vast that it's some times hard to track down answers to little questions like this.

Thank you for your help, this was exactly what i've been searching for.

[Ali Jaber]

Great. Be aware that, like Photoshop, stroke settings are independent of layers transformations (layer styles are executed after layer transformations), so: if you scale the layer then your stroke's width won't be scaled with it, and maybe this is not what you want, in this case, you may want to precompose your layer before transforming it.

Also, layer styles will cause various problems in other cases, such as using those with 3d layers, so use those carefully.