Pre-Comp Vector with Effects Fail :(

[MotionMindy]

I need part of a vector illustration to be in a pre-comp because the whole thing is scaled up & down at the main comp level, there’s a turbulent displace effect in the Pre-Comp to animate water. If I collapse transformations/continuously render (*) to make the vector look good, it disables the effects inside (turbulent displace). If I don’t collapse transformations so the effects show, the vector part of the illustration that is not animating and need to be scaled in the main comp level look blurry.

I could put everything from the Pre-Comp into the Main Comp, then use the camera to zoom instead of scaling, but having so much from this one scene in the main comp is a lot because this 4.5 minute animation has over 60 scenes and this first scene has so many layers. 😞

Any tips on a better way to handle this?? Work-arounds? I wish After Effects could Continuously Rasterize Vectors and still display Effects in Pre-Comps at the same time. Why do we have to choose between clean vectors and effects?

[Rick Gerard]

If the effects are disabled then you may be working with a 3D layer in a comp with the rendering options set to C4D. 

Applying Turbulent displace to the pre-comp or in the pre-comp should make no difference if you are using the Classic 3D rendering engine. 

If that does not work show us the modified properties of your pre-comp by selecting the layers and pressing 'uu' and then embed a screenshot. Do the same thing for the Main comp with the modified properties of the problem layer showing. Turbulent displace will look different if it is in the nested comp (pre-comp) when you turn on CR, but it will look the same as it would if it were in the main comp. That is because Turbulent displace does not respect layer boundaries. 

[MotionMindy]

I have it nested within another pre-comp that has a major vector
illustration, so that's my main issue.

[Rick Gerard]

Like I said before, Turbulent displace does not work on layer size, so if you have it in A pre-comp or you apply it to a nested comp, the look will change if you scale the nested comp when you Collapse Transformations. 

The only reason for CT to fail to sharpen up vector lines in a nested comp (pre-comp) is that there is a 3D comp set to use the C4D rendering engine somewhere in the chain or you have applied an effect to the vector layers that change them to pixels.

Drill down using your Flow Chart and figure out which effect is causing the problem. I am almost certain that you can solve the problem by simply modifying the order of effects or getting rid of any comps using the C4D rendering engine.