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Filed under: Motion Graphics •

Pasting Paths from Illustrator to After Effects

Pasting Multiple Paths

If you only create one Path in your Shape Layer, when you paste a group of paths After Effects won’t automatically create the right number of Paths - it will just fall back to its original behavior and paste a bunch of mask paths! And be aware that even if you first create the right number of Paths in a shape layer, and then paste each path individually, each shape will be placed centered in the comp (losing their relationship to each other).

If you paste paths individually from Illustrator to shape layers in After Effects, they will not maintain their relationship to each other, but instead will be centered in the comp.

To paste multiple paths and maintain their relationship, you need to paste all of the paths at once. To do this, you first need to do a little prep:

• In Illustrator, Select All and Copy. Count the number of paths you have copied. (If you have more paths than brain cells right now, first paste them to a solid in After Effects, then press M and count how many mask paths are created!)
• In After Effects, if you want to create a new shape layer, press F2 to Deselect All. If you want to paste to an existing shape layer, select it.
• Select the Pen tool, and click once in the Comp panel to create a new shape with a Path property. Expand the layer to reveal its contents, and select Path 1.
• Press Command+D on Mac (Control+D on Windows) to duplicate the Path as many times as you have paths to paste. In our example, we need 13 total.

The trick to pasting a group of layers is to first create the correct number of Paths in your shape group, and then carefully select all the Path properties. Now you can paste!

• So here’s the trick: Select Path 1 and then Shift+click your last path. Expand one of the selected paths to reveal all the Path properties. Now Shift+select each Path property so they are all highlighted (see the figure above).
• NOW you can paste! Voila! The paths are pasted as a group, with the correct relationship.

Our shape layer uses a radial gradient fill and a red stroke.

Finish off your design by setting the Fill and Stroke properties to taste, or go wild with shape effects such as Pucker & Bloat or Wiggle Paths. (If you’re new to Shape Layers, we wrote an introduction to them in a previous column.)

By the way, the above trick also works when you need to paste multiple mask paths to a shape layer - not just when pasting from Illustrator.

Yes, it really should be easier than this! We hope that Adobe considers a Paste Special (or even a Very Special) feature in the next revision so that users can choose whether to paste as mask paths or shape paths, and that the shape paths are created automatically. (Thanks for Jim Acquavella at Adobe for his help with figuring out the best workaround in the meantime.)

The content contained in our books, videos, blogs, and articles for other sites are all copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.

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I found it easiest to take a detour through Photoshop and paste the Illustrator paths in there first. choose the path option when pasting and make that into a Fill color layer, save and open the photoshop file in AE with the don’t merge effects option selected. you get a comp and a solid with as many masks as you need. I found this to be better when working with a lot of Illustrator paths, say more then a dozen, it can get really annoying to count them all and all that. hope this helps

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  08/31  at  03:08 PM

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just like to thank you for the clear tutorial on pasting illustrator path into shape layers in after effects.

I have found that you can speed up the opperation by making a single path with a keframe on the shape layer in after effects. then duplicating this up as many times as required. next you need to press u to open up all the animated properties of the shape layer, this then enables you to select all the keyframes by drawing a selection around them all thus saving you having to manually select all the path keyfames. hope this helps

Posted by shroomstudio  on  08/23  at  03:29 AM

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