Morphing Illustator files in AE

[Nicholas Toth]

https://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/page_wrapper.cgi?forumid=2&page=https://www.creativecow.net/articles/zwar_chris/morph/index.html

HOLY POTATOES!

That tutorial clarifies how to use the reshape effect. It does a GREAT JOB.

[Mike Clasby]

This is for Illustrator 9 to AE, a little long in the tooth, but might be useful:

Morphing With Adobe Illustrator by Rick Gerard

https://creativecow.net/articles/gerard_rick/morph/index.html

This also seems like a job for smaryt mask interpolation, hmm… maybe I should crack the books.

[Mike Clasby]

“I have two very simple shapes made in Illustrator. I want to morph one shape into the other. ”

If there are graphic patterns in the shapes, like you’ve imported .ai files, use the reshape plugin as suggested. If your quote means simple shapes with a solid color, AE can animate Mask Shape on a colored solid layer very quickly.

If you copy the 1st path in Illustrator, then Paste into an AE layer (a new solid (Ctrl Y)the color you want) you get a mask that is the shape of the Illustrator path. Click on the mask Shape stopwatch to set a keyframe, then go down the time line and add another Mask Shape keyframe (click the “add or remove keyframe at current time” box, just below the eyeball), if you just paste without setting a new keyframe first you get one mask shape (the one you’re pasting) that wipes out the other keyframe(s). Now if you copy a 2nd Illustrator path then paste it here you’ll get a new (second) Mask Shape keyframe in the shape of the second Illustrator path.

AE will automatically interpolate the mask shape change, essentially going from one mask to another. If the shapes are simple it can look good (the way you want), and you’re done.

But if the shapes are complex the corresponding mask vertices will flip as they interpolate, and the shapes kindof turn insideout. That’s where I think Smart Mask Interpolation comes in, but I still don’t have much luck with that. My bad.

What seems to work better for me, is auto-trace. It just makes new masks, essentially the same ones, but for some reason the interpolation for shape changes is better. It looks like Auto-trace is setting the first Vertice at the top of each shape and maybe traces (draws the mask?) in a uniform manner, the results being a more natural morph, at least for me.

Put each mask shape on its own layer, then Layer>Auto Trace (current frame only, and Tolerance 1 pixel, threshold 1%). You get a new layer, Auto-trace. “M” reveals the new mask, and you need to change the mask Shape keyframe to linear (it’s hold now), select the keyframe, right click, Keyframe Interpolation> Linear keyframes (the keyframe goes from square (hold) to diamond(linear). Do that in a new layer for each mask. Then in another new layer, I copy those new auto-trace masks and paste them back into Mask Shape keyframes (click the “set keyframe checkbox” again (by the eye) to set a keyframe before you paste), then you get a different mask shape for each keyframe. Anyway, after transferring the Auto-traced Mask Shapes to new keyframes in another layer, then AE interpolation of the mask shapes works better for me (looks better).

[Jaime Lackner]

Oh man thank you so much!!!
The Auto Trace worked so much better than Smart Mask!
Thanks again!

[Mike Clasby]

Cool. I dunno why Auto-trace is better, it must draw the masks the same way for each one, and as humans we don’t draw them in the same direction or order, whatever, it works. Glad it helped.