How do you turn an Illustrator layer in after Effects to 3D?

[Richard Garabedain]

Sadly you can on extrude shapes and text, and you must be in ray trace mode in your comp window = command + K.

[Walter Soyka]

[Richard Garabedain] “Sadly you can on extrude shapes and text, and you must be in ray trace mode in your comp window”

But you can convert vector footage layers to shape layers:

https://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/using/creating-shapes-masks.html#id_98601

Just right-click the layer and choose “Create shapes from vector layer.”

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
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[Chris Brett]

Hi David

I think you might well be able to do this as long as you have CS6 or higher.

If you do have CS6 you make sure you are in ray trace mode which allows a range of properties, including extrusion, on vector shapes and fonts ( which are vector shapes anyway )…..

….. therefore the answer to this lies in how to get from Illustrator to Ae………

I think this has to be possible but am not yet sure exactly how …..

…..recently copied an Illustrator vector and pasted it as a ‘path’ into Ae to animate a reveal – so presumably there is a way to copy and paste the Illustrator vector as a ‘shape’ as they are essentially the same thing as far as I can see…..

Therefore suggest you research ‘copy and paste’ from Illustrator ‘vector’ to Ae ‘shape’ then you are away I think …..

…..or if you can convert paths to shapes in Ae try — copying vector in Illustrator / paste to path in Ae / convert…..

Have recently done quite a bit of work in this area and this item is near the top of the list so have quite some interest in the outcome….

Please see image here if of interest – no 3D software used – all built in Ae ….

If it looks like this is working for you happy to assist further

———————————-chris —

[David Honan]

Thank you for all your replies, I’m going to give this another bash in the the next day or so. I’ll post my progress to share what worked 🙂

[David Honan]

Thank you for all your replies which all helped me convert an illustrator layer to a shape layer and ultimately allowing me to to add extrusion depth and this is how i did it. (CC Version)

Step 1: Right clicked on the illustrator layer
Step 2: In the menu that appears selected “Create shape layers..”
Step 3: Went into geometry options and voila suddenly Extrusion depth is available 🙂

Grazie mille!

[Chris Brett]

Hi David

Thanks for feedback — I will do some tests with this myself .

All the best —– chris

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