Importing Illustrator files to After Effects

[Jay Gray]

Im right there with you, man. Thanks to Steve, though. I think that should work out… I notice that all my layers are sublayers of the first layer, even though it labels them as “layer 2” “layer 3” and so on. so I just drag my objects or paths onto a new layer, and that will make them that new layer?

[Steve Roberts]

It should.

[Jay Gray]

Thanks a lot guys. I appreciate the help

[Rhett Robinson]

Okay, so I’m really an Illustrator guy… that’s my primary task here in the print world.

You can grab your sub layers and drag them above the primary layer they are in, and they will become primary layers as well. If you’re having trouble, create a new primary layer above the one you’re trying to pull elements out of, and drag the sub layer between, and delete the extra layers. Watch for locked layers/hidden layers when you import as a composition… AE will honor those, which actually is really cool.

This works really well when you have a number of elements on a single layer you want to split out. Use the “release to layers – Sequence” after you’ve grouped things the way you want, and you’ll have the sub layers easily divided for use.

[Fabiano Peres]

I had this same problem, and then I found that the problem was not the way I was importing it into After Effects, but the way I was creating the Illustrator file.
When you create any Illustrator file if you have something to be on a different layer in After Effects, you have to create a new layer before you start drawing… Just click the “new layer botton” there is an icon for it bellow the layers panel (almost like Photoshop) and then draw whatever you want on that layer, then create a new layer and so on. If you do it, when you open it in After Affects as a composition, it will have as many layers you have created in Illustrator.

I hope it helps.

[Sergio Felipe]

Hi, the same thing was happening to me and was very frustarting…….

just realised that the color mode of my psd file was set to CMYK instead of RGB. I had drawn my layers in Illustrator (CMYK) and then applied Photoshop effects so I ended up with a final PSD file to import into AE, but never noticed that it retained the Illustrator CMYK mode.

After changing the mode to RGB alll layers appear perfectly inside AE, before that it did very funny things….AE should be able to tell you when things like this happened in my opinion…..anyway is always good to check the possible most simple solutions