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AE Shape layers to Illustrator? (or merge shapes)
Hello!
I am doing a print project where the AE shape tools are superior to Illustrator in the sense that I rig up all my layers with expressions and keeping everything interactive!
I am particularly making good use of the repeater to make hundreds of rectangles that I use to cut-out (boole) shapes with.
My question is basically, is there any way in the world to convert these splines into something that I can import into Illustrator to prepare the print file?
Since you can copy shapes from AE to Illustrator I have also been thinking about the possibility to “flattened” my shapes somehow but unfortunately there isn’t any “Convert Shapes to Vector/Maks” commands.
Does anyone have any ideas? I am open to absolutely anything?I have tried the same setup in C4D with Spline mask and it kinda works but I get some weird spline errors that I haven’t been able to figure out. Also moving between C4D and Illustrator units means I am not able to work with the correct sizes.
As the project evolves it seems as After Effects would be a better tool for this job because of the weird layouts I have to work with. -
5 Replies
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There is a script that can get you part of the way there: Jeff Almasol wrote the script called rd_ShapesToMasks – if you are able to locate an active link to it.
Unfortunately, Jeff appears to have taken his excellent site off-line and the script is not easy to find. If your Google skills are good you may be able to locate it, perhaps someone here may know of a new source for these useful scripts.
**Update**
I’ve just tried this on a few shape layers in CS6 and the script no longer appears function. I suppose there were some AE scripting language changes that affect shapes and masks between CS3 when this script functioned well and the current versions of AE.
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That’s too bad. Thank you very much for taking the time to test it out.
I will keep searching for a solution.
Is there some kind of vector exporter for AE? -
I’m not sure of a way to keep it vector (as I’ve often wanted to), BUT I do have a solution that I use sometimes.
Make it big, I mean like really big. Make your comp like 10,000×10,000 and attach everything to a null. Scale that null up to fit the comp. Export it as a single frame TIFF sequence. Then take it into photoshop and resize the image by changing the dpi to 150 or 300 or whatever your specs (don’t resample the image!). If you do this right, your image will shrink in size, but the dpi will be high enough for print.
You’ll also want to change it to cmyk instead of rgb
“|_ (°_0) _|”
Sincerely,
George
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Cool! That might be a good workaround! Thanks for that tip 🙂
I just know that for this particular project, where I use sharp & very thin graphical shapes, the printer company were sceptical to use anything bitmap.
I have started investigating the scripting possibilities in Illustrator as well. It is definitly not a better alternative than AE shape layers, but if I need to keep it all in vectors it seems like my only alternative at the moment…
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> Unfortunately, Jeff appears to have taken his excellent site off-line…
Jeff’s site is back up, and he’s making his scripts available again:
https://bit.ly/AE_RD_scripts———————————————————————————————————
Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
After Effects quality engineering
After Effects team blog
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