Good night,
So, I'm with a problem that I couldn't solve so far.
I've done my work on Illustrator and released all layers into sequence, for Afx.
The problem is: When I import the .ai file to afx and choose "retain layer size", works fine:
But, when I "create shape from vector layer" (the .ai files, in this case), they all lose its source size, like the image below:
The weirdest thing is that few files only retain the same size when I create shape from layer.
Hope you guys can help me. Thank you
22
Replies
Unless you specifically need to use shape animators on your illustrator files there is absolutely no reason to covert the vectors to shapes. Gradient fils, multiple gradient fils, gradients along a stroke, and about a zillion other useful illustrator techniques will not translate directly to shape layers in AE. If all you need is the ability to continuously zoom without pixels fouling up the image then just turn on the Continuous Rasterization switch.
If you do need to use shape animators for your project then you have to simplify you Illustrator art or take the time to recreate gradients and other effects on the shape layer.
For example this fine illustrator artwork:
Turns into this mess because of all the groups and gradients:
At the present time there's nothing you can do about it except redesign in AI without gradients or live without the shape animator tools.
Nice work! this is not entirely correct. check this for yourself: place your objects in a video template and you won't have these problems.
here are the same objects in a video and film template of HD1080
imported to Ae and objects are cropped. yes you lose the opacity, but you can reintroduce it via fill opacity in the shape hierarchy 
Conclusion: read this first before you do anything from Ai to Ae - Preparing and importing still images in After Effects
Work and design your files however you feel comfortable, but when you are done - create a HD Video Template and place them inside to ensure you won't have any problems. this is only half the reason to use the Templates, the other half is avoiding cropping on the pasteboard. as demonstrated in here: Re: AI (illustrator) layers not showing up in AE (after effects) CC 2014
Thanks for the link, I just found out why some my AI files is cropped other isn't. (It's because for some of it I'm using HD Video template) 
One thing I'm not using it anymore is because it's more heavy (unresponsive) when working in AI.
I also found another thing, you can't use any blending modes beside Normal.
All object must be this (select all and check):
And I just tried the put the layer with transparency in HDTV 1080 template but it still doesn't work.
It makes the bounding box so large:
With all transparency 100% and blending mode normal it fixed:
if this is the case, you could move your elements only when your done. don't forget to check "Paste Remembers Layers" in the Layers panel options before you do
Yup that could do. But I also remember the trick to make it light and responsive by turning off Video Ruler.
The file is avaiable here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/63499976/hdtv-template-folder.zip
And I just tried the put the layer with transparency in HDTV 1080 template but it still doesn't work.
Good job. you have managed to break after effects 
I am going to need a while to examine this. thank you for this investigation.
Yup that could do. But I also remember the trick to make it light and responsive by turning off Video Ruler.
Good Tip. I will try to remember that. I don't work too much with Ai files.
What we are ended up with here is that all the advice you were given should have been taken into consideration. the first and more important one is by Rick Gerard saying this:
Unless you specifically need to use shape animators on your illustrator files there is absolutely no reason to covert the vectors to shapes.
for instance this figure here of the dude. do you really need ALL these vector layers as shapes?
and this is another advice by Rick very early on in this thread
Gradient fils, multiple gradient fils, gradients along a stroke, and about a zillion other useful illustrator techniques will not translate directly to shape layers in AE.
this is exactly what's causing these problems. take a look here at the help files: Create and customize shapes and masks in After Effects and this is the transcript from the Convert Vector Art Footage to Shape:
Choose Layer > Create Shapes from Vector Layer. A matching shape layer will appear above the footage layer, and the footage layer will be muted.
The following issues are known:
- Not all features of Illustrator files are currently preserved. Examples include: opacity, images, and gradients.
- Converted shapes ignore PAR overrides specified in the Interpret Footage dialog box.
- Gradients and unsupported types may show as 50% gray shapes.
- Files with thousands of paths may import very slowly without feedback.
- The menu command works on a single selected layer at a time.
- If you import an Illustrator file as a composition (i.e., several layers), you cannot convert all of those layers in one pass. However, you can import the file as footage, and then use the command to convert the single footage layer to shapes.
so guess they should have added: in some cases, when opacity or blend mode are involved, certain object may translate as the artboard bounding box and not the object
so to sum everything up, to avoid any problems in the translation from Ai to Ae:
1. first, be sure that you actually need to convert to shapes
2. work withing the HD templates
3. the Ai object translation to Ae shape may translate incorrectly when dealing with gradients, opacity, blend modes and other complex operations, so sometimes you would have to either recreate them within shapes, or dismiss them from your Ai file.
for the geeks among you that are interested in the specifics like me:
opacity or blend mode changes to any object in your illustrator file will cause the "create shapes from vector layer" feature to any of the layers to behave in the following manner: your shape layer will have an additional group in the shape hierarchy that will contain paths that constitute your Ai artboard and another merge paths operation. and it's very annoying
it could look like something like this if you work in an HD Preset.
BTW HD preset gives you 2 artboards.. it's actually a good thing:Re: AI (illustrator) layers not showing up in AE (after effects) CC 2014 )
here is the shape hierarchy comparison of Layer 1 that is normal and Layer 2 that has 50% opacity:
as you can see the artboard is here as a group with 3 paths and there is an additional merge path operation to the content of the shape.
What to do?
- if it's after the fact: you can just manually delete the group and the merge path from your shapes, or remove the blend mode / opacity from the layers in Ai (or set them to 100%/set them to normal) which is what Ae is going to do anyway, save the file again, and create shapes from vector layer again.
- before the fact - proper workflow: it is already known that opacity and blend mode (and not only them) don't translate to a corresponding shape anyway, so this makes this an easy workflow decision: if you do plan to convert to shapes, prior to importing to Ae - set your blend modes to normal and opacity to 100% if it's not.
- there's also this script: Explode Shape Layers 3 - aescripts + aeplugins - aescripts.com that is very handy for dealing with the whole conversion of Ai to shapes and it has the "Remove Artboard" feature. this from the script description: If any of your Illustrator layers have non-100% opacity or go outside of the frame, you've probably noticed that converting brings in an empty artboard artifact that gets in the way. No more! Remove it with Remove Artboard.
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