SCHOOL OF MOTION

Illustrator to AE: The Cheat Sheet

First Things First

Check for all of this stuff before you even go into After Effects.
NO EPS FILES
Convert anything CMYK to RGB File > Document Color Mode
After Effects could care less about your art boards. (03:45) Save a separate file with only one art board each.
Only the Top Most layers are kept as layers in AE. (05:45) Use Release to Layers (Sequence) as a quick way to get everything on it’s own layer.

Now We Can Do The Rest

The different ways to Import Files. (08:39)
Footage - Merges everything down into one flat layer.
Composition - Will preserve your layers, BUT they will all be made the size of the comp.
Composition Retain Layer Sizes - This is the one you’ll use most often. It retains the layers and crops the size of the layer to the size of the art.

You can get back art that’s cut off at the bottom. (11:23)
Convert the cut off layer to a Shaper Layer - Right Click on the layer, select Create Shapes from Vector Layer.
Find the Art Boards and delete them - You may have to do some digging to find all of these depending on how many layers got clipped.
You can use Explode Shape Layers 3 to help with speeding this process up. (13:14) http://aescripts.com/explode-shape-layers/

Didn’t break things up enough when you were in Illustrator? (14:34)

Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words - Better check out the video for this section.

Need a refresher on Beaking things up in Illustrator? (18:56)

Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words - Better check out the video for this section.

Don’t forget to Use Continuous Rasterization if you scale above 100%! (26:48)
It’s this little button right here -

The Little Things

Gradients will NOT convert to shape layers in AE. (25:18)
Don’t try to set up anchor points in Illustrator, those have to be set up in AE. (22:24)
Complicated shapes, like brushes and blend shapes should not be converted to shape
layers either. (28:20)
If you’re not sure about how something will break up into a shape layer test it in Illustrator
by using Opject > Expand or Expand Appearance. (30:26)
SCHOOL OF MOTION
Illustrator to AE: The Cheat Sheet

After Effects doesn’t like your Type

Get into the habit of outlining type from Illustrator. (34:51)
Outline Type Hot Key - Command/CTRL + Shift + O
If your Type is not outlined After Effets will give you an error when you try to Create Shapes from Vector Layers.

Help! I forgot a Layer

This means you’ll have to re-import the file. (36:08)
No amount of re-loading or saving the file can help you. Your fate is sealed.
Either isolate the new layer in Illustrator as it’s own file, or bring the whole thing back in to After Effects and bring the
new layer into your existing comp.