Please review the drawing tools to make shape and path editing intuitive and precise in AfterEffects.
It has always been a problem in AE but the latest updates have now made it really difficult.
(Especially by removing the shortcut: cmd = constrain angle.)
Ideally please implement the same functions and shortcuts as illustrator (maybe review both apps together to make the controls consistent and intuitive for people who use both regularly)
... or, at the very least, please add in (or bring back!) some basic precision drawing features for AE like:
-reinstate the shortcut to constrain angle while extending bezier handle length (singly or in pairs)
... I cannot stress enough how much I miss this feature (nor how clunky and stressful my drawing workflow has become now without it!).
-add a way to extend both handles equally OR extend only one side
... at the moment dragging a handle only extends one side (if you want to extend both equally it seems you have to re-drag out the handles from the center again using the convert vertex tool).
When you already have got the angle exactly how you want it, having to effectively start over is really frustrating; everything takes longer and it sacrifices drawing accuracy, when a simple keyboard shortcut would help you do it perfectly in a second.
At the moment ctrl, alt/opt and cmd don't seem to do anything, so prehaps:
ALT-CLICK toggles could convert vertex handles (same as present)
HOLD-CMD could constrain the current angle (like I think it used to be)
HOLD- SHIFT could snap it (maybe not only to 45 degrees, but between 0, 45, 90, 180, 225, 270, and 315 degrees OR a custom increment that you can define in preferences or something similar)
HOLD-CTRL could switch between affecting one handle or both (so the default would extend only one side while still affecting the angle on both, as at present, but holding CTRL could make it affect handle length and angle on both sides equally).
... or something roughly like that! Whatever makes most sense when compared to illustrator.
Personally I think it might even be better to swap ALT and CTRL (so ALT toggles dragging one handle or both, and CTRL is the convert vertex tool to break/rejoin handles).
Anyway, I am pretty sure this is a popular request because many AE users (myself included) use the drawing tools ALL THE TIME. This means we are running into the same frustrations, repeatedly, in pretty much EVERY project, and the workarounds (like going back to AI or just eyeballing it in AE) either cost significant time or sacrifice drawing precision. That's a pretty bad tradeoff and it makes the workflow significantly more jarring and stressful than it needs to be.
... not to mention, copying shapes from illustrator or using the "create shapes from vector layer" if you have imported the ai file doesn't always work as you want or expect it to (complex shapes often get re-created using merge paths and masks, which can be really messy, and you then have to go through an sort it out manually) and there can be other issues to sort out too ...
Yes, there are third party plugins like overlord that handle this function beautifully (allowing you to import and export shapes between the two apps and they arrive looking absolutely the same in both apps), but that isn't a free plugin anymore (I think it is over 80 dollars now!) so it would be really helpful have a similar functionality built in to the AfterEffects/Illustrator interface.
That said, overall, it would still be SO much easier to just have better drawing tools in AE (as adjusting a shape would take a few seconds, rather than having to open Illustrator, create a new project, redraw or copy everything into AI, make your changes, then copy the paths or save the file and import it back into AE (and then have to spend however long manually sorting out all the issues that have occured as a result!).
It would be such a great feature to just be able to create or adjust shapes and paths directly in AE, using keyboard shortcuts similar to AI to apply the right constraints to maintain precision, without sacrificing the sort of basic accuracy you get in illustrator.
Many thanks!
ps. one more tiny request on this same topic: when dragging out bezier handles, it would be useful if Info showed the current mouse position as you move the handles, rather than the static position of the selected vertex, so you can adjust the handles more precisely. If you need to know the position of the vertex you can alwasy just click-select it, but once you are actually dragging the handles out it would be a lot more useful to see where you are going, not where you have just been. This would enable you to effectively constrain an x or y value manually, by checking it hasn't changed before you release the handles, or you could extend multiple handles the same amount etc. etc.
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