"Release to Layer" is crashing Illustrator; attempting to prep file for use in After Effects

[Gabe15C2]

Hi all,

I'm attempting to release about 75 shapes into their own layers so that I can animate them in After Effects. When I select all of my shapes and attempt to run Release to Layer, I get a pause and then the indefinite pinwheel of death. I have to force quit before I can use Ai again. 

This is my first time trying to use Ae, so I followed some tutorials on how to setup an Ai file for ease of animating in Ae. Am I doing something wrong? Is 75 shapes too many to export? The file is a single 1920 x 1080 artboard. The most complicated shapes are maybe outlined text, though it's a sans serif without many curves. Even when I work in outline mode, the software crashes.

I'm using a 13-inch 2018 Macbook Pro running MacOS 10.14.6 Mojave with 2.3 GHz Intel Core i5 Processor and16 GB RAM. I have an Adobe CC plan.

Thanks for your insights!

[Kurt Gold]

75 objects should not cause much trouble here.

Just tried it again with 250 objects and it worked properly, no matter what Release to Layers command I used (Sequence or Build).

Can you share your Illustrator sample file (.ai)? Perhaps it contains some unknown disturbance.

[Gabe15C2]

It's client work so I'd rather not show it here, but I can't see any issues in the file... Sometimes I will release the layers and it seems to work (each shape is separated) but then the software freezes and I have to restart; other times it freezes before anything seems to happen.

[Gabe15C2]

Would compound shapes cause an issue? I have a few rings and numbers / letters with cutouts.

[Kurt Gold]

I just tried it with 300 compound paths (and after that with 300 live compound shapes).

It still worked properly (on a pretty old narrow-chested Mac Mini).