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Charlotte5CC0
Participating Frequently
May 3, 2023
Question

Layers are suddenly invisible

  • May 3, 2023
  • 1 reply
  • 2728 views

I created two characters in AI with the intention of animating them. Each of their body parts is its own layer. Both characters and their layers were brought into AE as comps. Since the characters do some movement, I parented each body part layer to the main "body" (torso) layer. Minimal animation required, though, and I had everything exactly where it needed to be until it came time to export.

 

For some reason, in the Media Encoder export, the arms of Character A are missing completely, and the mouth is wrong. In the original animation, Character A's "frowning mouth" layer is at 100% opacity for the first two seconds, then the "smiling mouth" layer replaces it at 100% opacity. In the export, however, Character A has no mouth for the first two seconds, then for some reason the frowning mouth appears instead of the smiling one. Long story short, those layers are suddenly appearing at the wrong times. 

 

I thought this was an export issue, because even though the export was screwed up the animation I was seeing in the AE timeline was perfectly fine. So I closed AE, opened it again, and now everything is screwed up. Even though none of the keyframes have changed and all of the layers are still active, the mouth and arm layers are "invisible" and not showing up at all in the animation. They are set to 100% opacity. 

 

I haven't changed any of the layers in AI. I am not using any masks or layer guides. The keyframes are exactly where they should be and are at full opacity. The layers are still in the comp. This problem only showed up when I went to export, and now seems to be permanent. I updated AE and the problem persists.

 

What is going on?? Is my only solution to start over from scratch?

 

 Some photos (had to black out my company name):

Here is the PreComp for Character A. As you can see, his ArmL layer is at full opacity and when I select the layer I can see where it is supposed to be. But where is it??

 

Here is the main comp. Character B (on the right) is fine and that is exactly how Character A is supposed to look. Except he has no arms, his mouth is wrong, and the text that is supposed to be on his chest (the selected layer) is invisible despite being at 100% opacity. (I hid "text2" layer for the purpose of this screenshot because that one is showing up just fine). 

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    1 reply

    iDAC
    iDAC
    Participating Frequently
    May 3, 2023

    Hiya Charlotte5CC0!
    It's possible that there could be an issue with the layer order or stacking order of the body parts in the AE timeline. Check to make sure that the arms and mouth layers for Character A are above the torso layer in the layer stack. It's also possible that there could be some sort of issue with the layer properties, such as the blending mode or transfer mode, that could be causing the layers to appear incorrectly. Double check the properties of each layer to make sure they are set correctly.

    If the issue still persists, you can try exporting the animation as a sequence of PNG or JPEG images from AE and then importing those into Media Encoder to create the final video file. This will allow you to isolate any issues with the export settings or video codec that may be causing the problem.
    Eager to help,

     

    -iDAC

    C
    Charlotte5CC0Author
    Participating Frequently
    May 3, 2023

    The layer stack hasn't changed at all, all of the appropriate layers are still in front. And the blending modes are all set to Normal. Like I said, I thought at first the issue was with exporting since the timeline looked fine, but after restarting AE now the timeline is screwed up too as seen in my screenshots. 

      C
      Charlotte5CC0Author
      Participating Frequently
      May 5, 2023

      Good to hear from you again Charlotte5CC0!
      It's possible that there may be a corruption in the project file itself. Have you tried creating a new project and importing the composition into it to see if the issue persists? It's also a good idea to save a backup copy of the original project file in case anything gets lost during the import process.

       

      Another thing to try is clearing the cache in After Effects. You can do this by going to Edit > Purge > All Memory and Disk Cache. This can sometimes help with performance issues or visual glitches.

      Keep the questions coming,

       

      -iDAC


      The solution I found was to close AE, rename the AI file, and reopen AE to get prompted to relink the AI file. Even though the AI file hadn't changed, relinking it cleared up the comp.

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