Preserve names of layers in Illustrator when importing into Animate?

[Yoonmi Kim]

So Flash had this thing where you could check off to preserve layers upon import, but Animate doesn't. This makes it super painful after importation to rename all of the individual parts of the image all over again when I already bothered to do it in Illustrator. Is there a work around so there is a checkbox that says, import all layers and preserve layer names? If there isn't a work around or either, then Adobe should seriously consider readding it back. It would improve my workflow, especially if it remembered folders.

The other thing that irks me, is after I've added bones to a project and then I've changed my mind, there seems to be no physical way to open the symbol to add additional things to the symbol which makes no sense to me. Is there a work around I'm missing. I'm double clicking on the layer with the bones, so it doesn't make sense why I can't open it and then it recalculate the shape. But it works with a regular symbol without bones to it. If this second part doesn't exist, then I'd argue that it should because sometimes you realize you got the shadow or a part wrong*after* you've moved it, and then you have to go back, then add the thing you wanted in the first place, then add the bones, then re warp it, but if you find out later the colors don't quite work the way you wanted after warping it, it means you have to keep repeating it, which interferes with work flow.

I know the whole, "Just create a new layer and paint over it." But for each frame I've created after I've changed my mind? And what if I've got 20 keyframes to shade and they need to be different for each frame now I can't enter the symbol to edit it because it has bones.

[kglad]

try using drag and drop from ai to animate and see if that does what you want.

[Yoonmi Kim]

Thanks, but nope, it doesn't. There's no checkbox for "preserve layers upon import" either.

[Mario_CR · Accepted solution]

The importer does preserve layer names from Illustrator, unless the name starts with a number or a special character in which case the character will appear with an underscore "_".

Make sure Convert Layers to: Animate Layers is selected. 

Result:

About your second question, by "bones" I assume you mean warped assets, they're not the same as symbols. They can be edited as well, albeit in limited form and only from the library. Select the warped asset (from the library) and click Edit.

*Please note that editing is only possible on versions 23.0.0 and up.

[Yoonmi Kim]

Thanks for the tip.

I think this is definitely an area they could improve the importing so one does not have to do that for the program. I'm saying Flash did have that capability without having to do special naming conventions.


I'm also having issues of having the program keep the layers upon creating a new symbol. It jams my workflow to have created all these lovely layer names from an AI file, and then create a symbol, and then have them collapse again. There should be a checkbox also there for when one click across layers and keyframes to preserve the layer names when creating a symbol without special layer names for it.

[Yoonmi Kim]

I think you should be able to double click or right click to enter the warped asset, instead of having to go to the library and have to find it for better workflow... especially since you don't know what it's going to be named.

[Mario_CR]

The naming convention won't change to how it was in Flash because if I recall, this is linked to the functionality of advanced layers and allowing these characters at the beginning can create conflicting errors. I agree with the rest of your points though, you can write your suggestions to the dev team using this form:

https://www.adobe.com/products/wishform.html