> Should I just not use the puppet tool on vector layers when continuous rasterization is selected? Short version: No. Best practice is to either size your artwork in Illustrator to the largest size that you expect needing for the animation, or to make all adjustments with Continuously Rasterize enabled and then pre-compose that layer, and apply the Puppet effect to the pre-comp. Long version: When you apply the Puppet effect (which happens the first time you click on the layer with any of the pin tools), the Puppet effect's first step is to create a mesh based on the raster outline (alpha channel) of the layer. The deformations you make by applying and manipulating pins work by modifying this mesh. The pins sit on intersections of the mesh, and it's those intersections that determine how the mesh is sculpted. On each frame, the Puppet effect renders the mesh deformation result. This render is rasterized pixels, not vectors, regardless of the layer type. i.e., Input pixels are warped to the mesh and output pixels are returned. The conflict between Continuously Rasterize (CR) and the Puppet effect isn't necessarily the difference between vector and raster, but that the Puppet effect only calculates the mesh that one time, when the effect is first applied. CR can cause the layer's outline to change on every frame. Thus, CR can cause the layer's pixels to mismatch the mesh that was created, and parts of your layer start falling outside the original mesh and stuff gets weird real quick. This problem is noted commonly by After Effects artists, so we've investigated what it would take to solve this problem. It's not easy, and not something I see us changing soon due to the complexity. The crux of the problem is that the mesh that the Puppet tool creates is adaptive and based on the unique raster outline of the layer. If the layer outline changes, the structure of the mesh needs to be recalculated. If the Puppet effect did that on the fly, the pins you place could move unexpectedly. For example, if you placed a pin on your character's elbow, and then the mesh was recalculated on a later frame, the mesh point where the pin sits may not longer exist. After Effects would need to either move the pin to the closest mesh intersection, which might be in the middle of the forearm or upper arm, or maybe no useful mesh intersection would exist and the pin would just get deleted. A related problem is performance: calculating the mesh is relatively quick, but it's not something you want to have happen on every frame, it would slow down rendering performance significantly. I hope that helps clarify.
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