editable Illustrator text in after effects

[Dan Danner]

Many thanks for the response. Unfortunately that’s not what I’m looking for. What I’m trying to achieve is the photoshop editable text in after effects… but with illustrator text.
I can’t be the first person to think of this. I’m hoping someone out there wrote a script for it.

[Dan Danner]

no no good sir, the ignorance is mine for not being more specific. Yeah the having both ae and ai open lets me adjust text… but I’m looking to achieve how you’re able to import photoshop text into ae then change it into editable text thereby animating it with ae presets and stuff… but with illustrator instead of photoshop. I built several nice vector designs with text but forgot that you can’t do the make editable text with it… doh!! I’ll most likely have to do it manually – copy and paste the ai text onto a blank text layer in ae in order to easily animate it with presets.

thanks for your help though, it’s appreciated!!

[Dan Danner]

I posted the same thing on videocopilot and John Dickinson from motionworks.au had a great answer for me – https://www.videocopilot.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=32429

[Rob Goodyear]

I have a bonus question, piggybacking on the original poster’s question:

Has anyone experimented with the XML project format, with the intent of editing text outside of the AE application?

I am running some tests right now, and it’s simple to tweak certain attributes externally, but typeset text is a slightly different animal… basically it gets stored as HEX strings in the XML file, which is pretty non-human-readable for the purposes of doing dynamic updates to a project.

[Mariano Moscuzza]

Thanks for the link Dan !!!

[Na Na]

Well, the answer is this:

1. In After Effects CS6 every vector file (.ai and .eps), can be imported and converted into a shape layer: Second click > “Create Shapes from Vector Layer”. Yes! Now it’s possible.

2. Can you import text from Illustrator? Yes, it’s possible an more easy. In illustrator, double click on the text > select it all > ctrol+c (cmd+c), go to After Effects > Create a new text > ctrol+v (cmd+v) it will paste text and format from Illustrator file.

Regards.

Alejandro Piñero Amerio

[Jim Lefevre]

Thank you all for this!!

Going through the exact same thing as I’m using some press advert layouts from a print thing and creating a film with them but a lot of it has ‘perfectly’ laid out type from the designers so the ‘select-text-copy-paste’ thing isn’t an option for me.

Here’s a quote from the super useful link above from Video Co Pilot in case you can’t get to it…

The workaround for this is to “Export” your Illustrator file to the Photoshop (.psd) format. Then open the .psd in After Effect as a Composition, select the text layer and choose Layer > Convert to Editable Text.

Best wishes,

John Dickinson
https://www.motionworks.com.au

although I would add that it only exports from Illustrator as layers if it is in CMYK mode and so I had to pass it through Photoshop to convert it to RGB (otherwise it was just bringing it in as a single layer into AE when it was CMYK).

All you Creative Cows rock!

Jim

http://www.jimlefevre.com

[Erik Lingerfelt]

Hello,

I’m trying out CC 2017 and just noticed the Copy/Paste is broken from AI to AE. Since I experiment a LOT, I also just figured out that C/P from AI to PS works ok and the from PS to AE ALSO works Ok! Yey! Now I just keep wondering who’s fault is this?
I just got mad for losing this so useful function, but – for now – using PS as a bridge for the transition is better than nothing at all.

Erik

[Andrew Jehan]

Your little P.S. saved me! What a crazy process!

Step 1: Export Illustrator graphic as a CMYK Photoshop file.

Step 2: Open the file in Photoshop and convert it to RGB and save it again.

Step 3: Open the Photoshop file as a composition in After Effects.

Step 4: Create editable text from text layers.

The instructions elsewhere were always missing that CMYK/RGB info, and the copy-pasting wasn’t working for me. Thanks so much!

[Kevin Camp]

You can also change the color from CMYK to RGB in Illustrator (file > document color mode > RGB), then export to PSD (choosing the editable text option) and then import the PSD as a comp in AE and make the text layers editable.