SWF Archive in After Effects

[Kyle Delso]

Hey all,

A while back Colin Holgate​ helped me out, suggesting that I export my work in Animate using the SWF Archive via Publishing. This has has been an awesome way to work (er... minus a few things here and there)... But recently, we've noticed that in AE, after importing our layers, they will drop frames, freeze up, load in blank (even though further inspection of the file would negate that).

I noticed this a while ago, and did a render test anyways-- and the render turned out 90% okay. Well enough for me to fudge it into the edit (I'm still glaring at you, Adobe!). I've done more of these render tests on our recent animations, cleared the caches and purged the memory, etc... We still keep getting these EXTREMELY annoying errors. We have work to do!

Any help is greatly, greatly appreciated. Thank you all!

Kyle

[Colin Holgate]

Have you been using the Camera layer features in Animate? I think that currently those don't work in AE.

If not, could you post an example project for me to try? Either a SWF archive and some instructions, or an AE project that shows the issue.

[Kyle Delso]

You know what, Colin. I have. That breaks my darn heart.

It's worked before which is confusing... I'll try some renders without the camera trickery.

Any tips on achieving the same results in AE without exporting 8k SWF archives from Animate?

Thank you!

[Colin Holgate]

You use swf archive as away to get the layers into AE in a way that they are separate tracks, that you can then use the AE camera movements on. If you're going to do the camera movement in Animate, could you just export video instead of swf archive? The file would be quite large though.

[Kyle Delso]

Yes, I could do that. The issue is retaining resolution in the artwork when we punch in-- that's what made the Animate camera so great.

We have certain animations at one scale that we'd like to punch in on. And doing that in AE blows up the artwork, rasterized/pixelated. In Animate (to my knowledge) it's all still vectors and looks great.

Hope I'm making sense.

[Colin Holgate]

I had thought that AE was still looking at vectors, but maybe it isn't. Would be interesting to do a similar test with an Illustrator file.

If you do end up exporting to video you can increase the quality level. Set any bitmaps in the library to allow smoothing, and to be lossless. Also, in frame 1 of the timeline, add this code in the Actions panel:

stage.quality = "16x16";

[Kyle Delso]

I had thought that AE was still looking at vectors, but maybe it isn't. Would be interesting to do a similar test with an Illustrator file.

Hmm. Maybe I'm not explaining it well enough.

Normally I animate in Animate > Use the Camera tool in Animate > Publish SWF Archive > Pull them in AE for comping and effects

Are you saying that (to your knowledge) the SWF Archive is composed of Vectors, and that scaling them up in AE shouldn't mess with the resolution? That'd be one way around it if that's the case!

[Colin Holgate · Accepted solution]

So guess what, I have seen a solution to rasterizing vectors in Motion, and I felt sure that AE ought to be able to do the same thing. Turns out it can. In your SWF layers (I mean, the tracks in AE, not the layers in Animate), enable the little star icon:

[Kyle Delso]

So first off--

1) You're right, the published SWF files ARE vectors, so I can scale them worry-free!

2) Clicking the Collapse Transformation button does speed things up and help quite a bit.

3) Using the camera tool/layer from Animate seems to be the main culprit, seeing a TON of problems with it.

I guess we're in an okay spot... for now... until Adobe decides to give Animate/AE a better relationship.

Thank you once again, Colin Holgate​!!!!