AE & XFL for Flash

[Todd Kopriva]

The details of what is translated and how are on this page. There’s a comment from one of the After Effects quality engineers on that page that specifically addresses parenting.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
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[Kurt Murphy]

Thanks for responding Tod… I exported my AE project out as an AFL, but when opened it in Flash, nothing showed up… Either in the timeline nor library. I deleted the null layers, camera, and parents (leaving only illustrator files with keyframes), and still nothing showed up. Any ideas what I’m doing wrong?

thanks,

kurt murphy

[Tim Kurkoski]

Kurt – What option did you choose for Layers With Unsupported Features in the XFL settings dialog? If you chose Ignore, your .AI layers would not appear in the XFL. See the Help document that Todd linked to for an explanation.

You don’t need to delete your other layers (nulls, cameras, etc.). Just keep in mind that they don’t translate directly to Flash. AE attempts to maintain visual fidelity when exporting to XFL; that is, the appearance of your comp should be the same in Flash as it is in AE. The structure and/or number of layers may be very different, but it should look the same.

[Kurt Murphy]

Todd,

Thanks for the response… I’m home now so I was able to experiment. I see that Flash doesn’t recognize 3D layers (so I turned them off), AND Continuos Rasterization (so I turned that off). Then I see that it doesn’t recognize ai files (unsupported file type). What DOES it recognize? I can animate in AE MUCH easier than I can in Flash. I want to keep my file sizes small so I don’t want to rasterize any 3D or effects. I was hoping that i could do this…..

thanks,

kurt

[Todd Kopriva]

> What DOES it recognize?

Any answer that I give is just going to be quotes from the document that I linked to, since I wrote that document to answer exactly that question.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
———————————————————————————————————
If a page of After Effects Help answers your question, please consider rating it. If you have a tip, technique, or link to share—or if there is something that you’d like to see added or improved—please leave a comment.

[Kurt Murphy]

Thanks Todd, one last question though – I read the ‘rtfm’ but saw no mention of illustrator, .eps, or .ai files. The beauty of this type of file is the small file size. I usually create most of the files for Flash in Illustrator for this reason. I get an ‘unsupported file type’ error when i look at the html file. I slowly found out it was from having the 3D switch on, then continuous rasterization on, then possibly trimmed layer, etc.

Please just let me know, does it not recognize Illustrator files without having to rasterize them (or do i have to save them differently)?

thank you,

kurt

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

Heya Kurt, howzabout converting the vector files to either Shape layes or Masked solids? Just an idea.

Cheers
RoRK

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[Todd Kopriva]

Vectors from Illustrator aren’t preserved as vectors.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
———————————————————————————————————
If a page of After Effects Help answers your question, please consider rating it. If you have a tip, technique, or link to share—or if there is something that you’d like to see added or improved—please leave a comment.

[Kurt Murphy]

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Ouch. Well, then I vote to try to remake the XFL format as something useful. I can see where Flash would render out Transfer Modes, some 3D, etc., but I use Illustrator files WITHIN Flash all the time. I really thought this might be a great solution to animating in Flash’s clunky interface.

I’ll try Roland’s good advice and convert my files to shape layers (assuming that Flash will translate those)….

thanks,

kurt

[Todd Kopriva]

Shape layers are rasterized, too.

Exporting as XFL from After Effects is not a good way to work with vector graphics.

Here’s a link to the feature-request form.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
———————————————————————————————————
If a page of After Effects Help answers your question, please consider rating it. If you have a tip, technique, or link to share—or if there is something that you’d like to see added or improved—please leave a comment.