Extrude

[German Rubio]

You can take vector from illustrator to AE and the use INVIGORATOR 3D (its a 3rd party plugin) to extrude the text or the form you have prevoiously selected or converted to vector.

Its nice cause you can control the 3d camera and also lights and surface properties.

About extrude by the normal way, I have no clue.

You can apply a shadow to the text to simulate something.

Hope to be helpful!!!!

[Teraflop]

I dont think you can create true extrusion without a plugin, but here is a tutorial explaining one technique of obtaining a similar effect.

https://www.creativecow.net/articles/mylenium/pseudo_extrude/

If you arent happy with this result and are after a plugin, FreeForm by Forge might be the one for you. (note: i havent actually tried it)

https://www.forge.net/ffae_extrude.htm

To use vectors created using Illustrator just import your .ai file as you would any other footage file. You will be given options of which layer (one/all) to import etc. You can even use vectors as motion paths or masks by copying (from Illustrator) and pasting – the Illustrator help files have extensive explanations on how to do this.

[Andy Bentley]

Unfortunately, there is absolutely no way to extrude objects in AE without a plugin and even if you extrude your picture in Illustrator, it will still import into AE as a flat image. But there is a way to import Illustrator files into AE. Simply go to file, import, and select the file that you want to import. Once you do that, a dialogue box will appear giving you some options for importing. If you want the layers to be seperated in AE just select import as: composition, and then tell it to import all the layers.

Hope this helps,
Andy

[Milesl2@mac.com]

Yes and yes,
Using bevel alpha (under Perspective in effects) you can give the appearance of extrusion.
Also, try adding a drop shadow and adjust the settings to give a 50’s movie style extruded effect as well. For more realistic (and expensive) effects, there are likely some plug-ins you could buy.
You can import illustrator projects into AE, just make sure that each element you want to animate is on a seperate layer (in AI) from each other.
Miles