• Adobe Illustrator

  Combining many paths into one path so After effects reads it as 1 mask

  Posted by James Pierson on December 11, 2013 at 3:15 pm

  Hello,

  I have an image I have drawn in Flash/Illustrator with the pen tool (so all the lines are paths, no fills).

  From Illustrator I want to copy the path, and paste it into After effects as a mask, with the goal to apply the stroke effect, and also have an image follow the same path at the same time.

  However, when I bring it into after effects there are 30+ masks, as the paths I am copying from Illustrator interpret as lots of individual paths, rather then one whole mask/path.

  I tired the ‘join’ command in Illustrator, but that creates lots of ugly straight lines all over my image. I also tried using unite command with ‘pathfinder’ but to the same result (lots of lines all over the place). Making a compound path does also not work, as After effects still sees the paths as lots of individual paths..

  Any help would be greatly appreciated.

  Many thanks!

  Vincent Rosati replied 12 years, 4 months ago 2 Members · 1 Reply
• 1 Reply

• 

  Vincent Rosati

  January 6, 2014 at 1:42 am

  I think you almost had it with Pathfinder / Unite. You’d just need to Object / Expand before copying out of Illustrator.
  Some versions of AI also have a command option, when you click the Unite button, that will automatically expand it. Don’t remember which though.

  Vince

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