Prevent renaming Layer upon copy-paste in Animate?

[Yoonmi Kim]

So, I often create items from other places... say a Map of Europe from Wikipedia...

Or I import items from illustrator to animate into Animate.

Every time I copy-paste from a different program it renames the layer to: "FlashAICB"

This creates issues because if I have a long animation, then I am not sure which layer is what. It keeps overwriting the layer name. Sometimes I type the name prior to pasting, and then it deletes it. If I'm animating... say a series of backgrounds, pasting a new background is locical, but I don't want to have to ename the freaking layer 20 times for 20 backgrounds away from the nondescript "FlashAICB" when I've already named it "Background" and the file has a name.

Is there a way to prevent Animate from renaming the layer?

 To demonstrate the issue:

New Document:

 
Layer 1 is named: Layer_1

Illustrator import star:

 The layer is renamed "FlashAICB"

OK... Rename layer again...

 Renamed Layer: "Star"

 Import new object (yes, I do get you can copy object on stage, but you should get the point)

 Renamed again: FlashAICB

*crying*

 Import another type of object: renamed FlashAICB

Copy-paste text? it doesn't rename the layer.

What gives?

One might think something like, "Well, you should prepare all of your backgrounds ahead of time."

Yeah, but well, some people don't know they are going to be doing another 6 backgrounds.

And I know someone is likely to say: "Well, you should create a new layer for each copy-pasted item" But scrolling through 20 layers of backgrounds isn't practical. It's easier to do it in one layer. And soemtimes also to animate two objects in the same layer. Or to update the object in the same layer. But I don't know what the layers are if it keeps renaming the layers to the same exact thing over and over again and it's difficult to know which layers are now empty and useless if they keep being renamed. With a 7 minute or more animation, this becomes unweildly.

Scripts don't work on this machine for whatever reason... they might be blocked or whatever. I'm looking for a native fix or I consider this a deeply annoying bug.

For people who say, well draw native to Animate. I dun wanna. It's too messy and it has less features than Illustrator to do particular things.

So anyone have a fix for this annoying bug?

If it's considered a feature, then there should be a checkbox on import "Don't rename Animate layer" that persists upon 2nd, third, etc import.

[kglad]

you see that when using files created by apps other than illustrator?  you see that when using images copied from elsewhere and pasted into animate?

[Yoonmi Kim]

It's only Illustrator. It would be useful if it preserved the name from Illustrator, but it doesn't do that either

.

As a result I have a bunch of folders that look like this in the Library. Paste used to remember the name of the layer when it was Flash, but it doesn't do that anymore, so I'm stuck with having to name and rename the layer. The insistance that it rename the layer when I didn't ask for that is odd. It remembers layer names between illustrator files. And it remembers layernames in Animate, but not Illustrator to Animate nor is there an option to not have it do that.

It's restricted to Illustrator to Animate (which still remembers it's Flash, so it must be an antiquated coding?)

[kglad]

i don't see that.  ai imports assign the animate layer(s) name(s) to match the ai layer(s) name

[Mario_CR]

There's a difference between copy-pasting and importing the Ai document.

When copy-pasting you're selecting the object, not the layer; and so a generic name is assigned to it.

When you import the Ai document (i.e File > Import > Import to Stage), layer information is read and names are preserved. So if this information is important, import documents, don't copy-paste.

[Yoonmi Kim]

But this is a pain to have 30 different AI documents and I tried it, and it didn't preserve the layers properly.

And shuffling through 30 different layers, making sure they visually match the layers you want to select is also a pain in the butt.

Paste should remember layers and layer names.

In addition, I tried the import and it still didn't remember the layers and the sub layer names. (It also has an odd habit of separating the outline from the object itself.)

Here... but I'm running on a Mac?

The last one is the Illustrator layer hierarchy to show it matches the screen for the original. And it doesn't do it.

   

I have build 24.01? Build 329?

So literally doesn't remember layers at all.

I have an object I named the group "ears" and the object is called group instead.

 Might be a Mac bug?

BTW, I do get that Adobe purchased Flash (originally) from another company and that making two applications you did not originally create talk to each other is a little piece of hell (given how long it took to get Illustrator and Photoshop to cooperate with each other after Illustrator was purchased), but I think it would help in a UX capacity.

[Mario_CR]

In addition, I tried the import and it still didn't remember the layers and the sub layer names. (It also has an odd habit of separating the outline from the object itself.)

Because there's only one full layer in this document (Layer 1) the rest are sub-layers of Layer 1, these are not separated; same thing happens if you import the file in After Effects, only full layers are counted (and named), the sub-layers are merged. Try converting them to full layers:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kig4gJc8_Q

Even so, you'll notice Illustrator will reset the names of the groups for the full layers. Unfortunately these files were not set-up properly for export / animation, and will require extra time to make them usable.

I have an object I named the group "ears" and the object is called group instead.

You can't name groups in Animate, they're just groups.

[Yoonmi Kim]

I kinda think that they could make the groups namable as well to make it easier to keep track and then the import would be dead easy as well as paste remembers imports, but I also understand that maybe the back end architecture isn't set up properly.

Groups wouldn't create conflicts (programming lingo), so duplicates aren't a huge deal within the file. If it is, you can do a "go to conflict names for group" type of dialogue box.

But I know this is a boring and a piece of programmer hell, however, I do think the functionality would improve significantly.

The issue with separate layers is that I have over 20 objects in the file, so that's organization hell. But having 20 separate files isn't feasible.

What I'm requesting is basically a better architecture for copy-paste.

They did fix it in a later build by getting it to paste to a new layer, but the translation of AI file to Animate is still pretty miserable.

It's more like a UX issue to me.

What I'd propose is that Animate remember the names of the groups because you can name the groups in Animate so you know where you are for duplicate symbols+ the name of the layers with paste remembers layers without having to go through the import window.

This way, group layer "ears" would be Animate group named, "Ears" and thus remove some of the conflicts with paste remembers layers and the importation.

[Nicktendo28]

I would recommend when you are building a character in Illustrator and trying to bring it into animate that you keep it simple and import it, instead of copying and pasting it into animate and you should not have this issue.

[Yoonmi Kim]

As I said, it doesn't work--I demonstrated that above. I did download the latest version, but it had additional bugs I couldn't fix.