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Disappearing Illustrator Layers/Assets, AE CS5

Explorer ,
Jan 27, 2011 Jan 27, 2011

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Hey guys,

First my specs, just in case:

MAC OSX 10.6.6

AE CS5 10.0.1.19

8-Core

24 GB RAM

I'm having the strangest issues with adobe illustrator layers in my timeline... they keep disappearing at random moments during playback. Somtimes its during RAM preview, somtimes its when I'm scrubbing the timeline, but never at the same point and it doesn't seem to be consistant for which layers dissapear or appear. To be clear, the layers themselves are not disappearing in the timeline, but in my active view/camera.

There are 13 illustrator layers, all of them are 3D Layers. I have, at various points, been able to see all of my layers when they should appear on screen, so Its not an issue of a layer getting in the way of my camera and obscuring anything (i don't think). It's not an opacity issue... It seems to be something with my illustrator files and CS5. I've even tried moving the files over to a different machine, and I've tried opening up the project on a Windows box, but the problem persists. I'm truly puzzled.

Its not the biggest issue at the moment, as long as I can get a clean playback in AE for my client this evening, but I'm scared to continue working only to find that I can't render out any of my final project to broadcast.

Anyone have any clues? I'll post updates as needed.

Thanks in advance,

Dylan

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Explorer ,
Jan 27, 2011 Jan 27, 2011

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At least I can get my playback in AE to be correct by Purging the Cache, but I need to be able to render out a final movie.

And upon futher work I was able to get an output with "Render using Open GL" checked, but I was told not to use this by Todd here: http://forums.adobe.com/thread/734343

Is this still true, or did this change with the update?

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Jan 27, 2011 Jan 27, 2011

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If rendering using OpenGL gives you results that you're happy with, go ahead and do it. But most people aren't happy with it.

I'm guessing that the reason that rendering with OpenGL made things work is that OpenGL turns off Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously multiprocessing. Try turning that off directly and not using OpenGL.

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LEGEND ,
Jan 28, 2011 Jan 28, 2011

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thedillpickle wrote:

First my specs, just in case:

MAC OSX 10.6.6

AE CS5 10.0.1.19

8-Core

24 GB RAM

That kind of machine ought to work well for multiprocessing.  So if Todd recommends turning multiprocessing off, you simply may have your memory and processor allocations out of whack. 

Check out this blog, also by the Good Mr. Kopriva:

http://blogs.adobe.com/toddkopriva/2010/10/please-try-recommended-memory-settings-for-after-effects-cs5-and-give-feedback.html

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Jan 28, 2011 Jan 28, 2011

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It's possible that there's a bug with how the Illustrator files are being used when Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously multiprocessing is turned on. I haven't seen such a thing, but it's possible.

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Explorer ,
Jan 30, 2011 Jan 30, 2011

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If I turn off "Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously" OR if I use Open GL, then the project Renders just fine. However, with "Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously" off the render time is increased to about 13 min for a 30 second comp.

Could it have anything to do with Nesting my composition? If I have multiple 3D .ai layers in one comp, and I precompose/nest that comp inside another one, should I turn on 3D for that nested composition, or should I leave it off? And if I leave it off, will I still be able to navigate a camera around those objects in 3D space?

I'll try turning off 3D for the nested comp and then see if Render Multiple Frames works...

Also, thanks for the quick replies, and I'm sorry it took me a bit to get back on this one. Busy Busy all the time!

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Explorer ,
Jan 30, 2011 Jan 30, 2011

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No dice with that last one... seems I'm stuck having to use OPEN GL or have "Render Multiple Frames Simlutaneously" Turned off for the moment. Not a huge issue I guess, as I can still render a higher quality one without Open GL, it just takes a while...but its kind of a bummer that I can't utilize some of the extra power that my system has.

BTW my RMFS settings were

RAM available: 24GB

Ram Reserved for other Apps: 8GB

RAM for AE: 16 GB

Installed CPUs: 16

CPU's Reserved for Other Apps: 1

RAM allocation per BG CPU: 3 GB

Actual CPU's that will be used: 4

I'll keep messing with my settings and renders when I have time, and I'll let you guys know if anything changes. Again, I appreciate the help.

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Guest
Feb 03, 2011 Feb 03, 2011

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Unfortunately I have no solutions but I am having the exact same problem. It seems to be some type of bug as all can be fine and well one minute, then you save & exit, go back in later and an illustrator layer has disappeared. Again, the layers are not disappearing in the timeline, just in the active camera view. I've noticed when they disappear in RAM preview, they are still there when scrubbing and vice versa. My setup is pretty feeble compared to yours so perhaps it is just a RAM thing...

MAC OS X 10.6.5

2.4GHz Intel Core i5

Memory 4GB

AE CS5 10.0.1.09

AI CS5 15.0.0

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Guest
Feb 03, 2011 Feb 03, 2011

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I should also point out that I already had 'Render Multiple Files Simultaneously' switched off when the problem started. I've just discovered that if I bring the resolution down to half on the RAM preview then everything is back so perhaps for me it is just the frailties of my machine...I don't see how that could be true in your case though...

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Guest
Feb 03, 2011 Feb 03, 2011

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The half res solution was short lived I'm afraid, I have 3 layers which are taking it in turns to disappear. You can make them visible by putting the preview down to half res, then they disappear again, upping it back to full res or putting it down to 1/3 then seem to solve the problem...for about 5 minutes. It's now got to the stage where I'm constantly changing the display resolution just to see my layers again. The real bad news is that despite getting the preview to the stage where I can see all of my disappearing layers & everything is behaving as it should, the render is missing a layer.

Is nobody else having these problems? This is an absolute nightmare.

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Explorer ,
Feb 03, 2011 Feb 03, 2011

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This sounds like exactly the same issue I was having. If I messed around with my resolution settings, some layers would appear at certain points, and some layers would disappear (in active camera). However, I noticed that if the problem all I would have to do was "Purge" the cache (Edit>Purge>All, and everything would pop-back. Hopefully this helps you a little bit. I have yet to fix or figure out a solution to the problem for a Final Render with Multiple Frames Turned on. Perhaps this is a bug then? At what point do we consider submitting a bug report/request?

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Feb 03, 2011 Feb 03, 2011

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> At what point do we consider submitting a bug report/request?

As soon as you find yourself thinking that you've encountered a bug.

http://www.adobe.com/go/wish

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Community Beginner ,
Mar 31, 2011 Mar 31, 2011

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I can verify that this is happening to me too routinely since moving to AE CS5. It only seems to happen to Illustrator layers. It is possible to get the layers to display properly if they're exported to Photoshop but this is not a solution for most of my purposes.

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Explorer ,
Apr 01, 2011 Apr 01, 2011

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This seemed to be an issue with the continuous rasterization bug that is documented elsewhere on these forums. If you make sure that every layer with the illustrator files has "continuous rasterization" turned on, then it should fix the bug, or at least it did for me.

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Community Beginner ,
Apr 05, 2011 Apr 05, 2011

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None of these standard solutions have worked for me; or in some cases, they seem to work, then the problem recurs. Among the standard fixes that I've applied are: switch on Continuous Rasterize for all Illustrator layers, turn off Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously multiprocessing, and turn on thumbnails in the Project panel. Last time my Illustrator files weren't appearing, I was able to get them to show up by converting brush strokes to outlines in Illustrator and resaving the files.


The Illustrator files are now working okay as long as they're 2D, but I've just converted them to 3D layers and I'm back to square one. I can see the layers in Active Camera view but they disappear in any other view; and when I can see the Illustrator layers, they don't respond when I move the camera around and act as if they're 2D.

After Effects CS5 is now unusable for me. I'm going to have to revert to CS4.

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Participant ,
Apr 07, 2011 Apr 07, 2011

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I'm also having a problem with disappearing Illustrator layers in AE CS5.

When I open up the comp, only the layer bounding boxes and anchor points are visible against the background color. The layers have become entirely transparent, but opacity is set to 100%. The asset thumbnails in the project panel are also affected.

Here's the really strange thing: the layer visibility will return temporarily if I open the layer panel, and click the layer eyeball on and off. When the file is opened again, the layers are invisible again.

Rebuilding the project, reloading the assets and purging the cache makes no difference. Turning on the continuously rasterize switch for each layer does seem to help. This is a very, very simple 2-D test comp: no nesting, effects or even animation yet. I will probably try rebuilding the project in AE CS4 to see if the same problem occurs.

I'm a beginner and have only been using After Effects since last fall (iMac i5/16 GB running OSX 10.6.6).

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New Here ,
Jul 13, 2011 Jul 13, 2011

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Hey all!

I soooo had this problem late last night at 1 am in the morning, and though my project is due today, I got so frustrated that I just shut everything down and turned my computer off!  But, when I opened up everything this morning, it was working fine... (twilight zone soundtrack music)

After reading everyone's posts, the only explanation I have is to shut it all down and restart your computer.  My computer is set to clear all my caches and other extras, which refreshes the computer's RAM and resets the program software.  If you're work load is as big as mine (or bigger) you might set your system up to do the same, clear everything out, SAVE AS, and Restart.  As long as you can see all your layers and effects, and the problem is being able to see a preview in active camera, this should work. 

Good Luck!

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Community Beginner ,
Nov 17, 2011 Nov 17, 2011

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I am experiencing this problem as well, and while on hold with Tech Support (who told me no solutiuon exists) I figured out a solution that so far has worked for me. The problem is in how Illustrator saves the file; by default "use compression" is checked; after re-saving the AI file with compression un-checked the problem has gone away.

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Participant ,
Nov 18, 2011 Nov 18, 2011

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Great that you solved this for your project. I always uncheck compression, so this solution won't work for me.

I finally gave up on my comp with disappearing layers & moved on to other stuff. Fortunately, no problems with infinitely more complex projects in CS5.5.

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New Here ,
Dec 07, 2011 Dec 07, 2011

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We've been having what sounds like the exact same problem at work, and nothing seemed to help. We tried turning off the multi-processing, turning on/off open GL, continuously rasterizing the illustrator layers, nothing worked... Until we realized that our Illustrator files had a second, huge artboard surrounding Artboard 01. Deleting the larger artboard fixed the problem.

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Community Beginner ,
Dec 07, 2011 Dec 07, 2011

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Thanks for the response. What worked for me was re-saving the AI file without compression. Nice that you could solve it one way, and I could solve it another, but Adobe tech support couldn't at all.

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New Here ,
Dec 07, 2011 Dec 07, 2011

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We tried that too! And weirdly, it seemed to work after we did that, until we closed the project and came back to it.

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New Here ,
May 13, 2012 May 13, 2012

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richardbwallace solved this for me thanks A LOT man!  Tried resaving with compression off, didn't work.  Deleted the large artboard and now everything is rendering perfectly with multiprocessing on.

>Go into your illustrator file

>Zoom all the way out until you see the grey area around your artboard.

>Select your artboard tool on your left toolbar

>Select the large surrounding artboard, press delete.

You don't have to zoom out but it may help in selecting.

I am on CS5.

Been battling with this for months and was forced to work with multiprocessing off!  Thanks again Richard!

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New Here ,
Jan 19, 2012 Jan 19, 2012

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I had the same problem. I did a render in HDV (1280x720) MP4 and some layers they disappeared when I tried to do render.

The solution that I founded is make the render without compression. Only AVI Uncompresed UYVY and after that compress the clip to the format do you need with the Media Composer.

It was the solution for me.

Suerte y saludos!.

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Community Beginner ,
Jan 19, 2012 Jan 19, 2012

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Thanks for the response. What worked for me was to re-save the Illustrator file with compression turned off.

Michael MacKenzie Design

60 Meagher Avenue

Milton, MA 02186

Home: (617) 615-8137

Cell: (781) 608-5149

View my demo reel at www.michael-mackenzie.com

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