How do I add a custom brush effect?

[Maregula]

Hi there,

I have a question:

Is it possible to use custom brushes in After Effects? I have an illustration in Illustrator, in which I’m using charcoal brushes, but when I import it into AE, it’s not an editable path anymore In the brushes panel in AE I can see that there are only built-in brushes, is it possible to import custom brushes from Illustrator?

If not, do you know how I could add this effect to a stroke in AE, to make it more rough, uneven, more like a charcoal, chalk brush? I could use normal brushes and then maybe add this distortion effect to it? Is it possible?

Thanks for all your help

[Dave_LaRonde · Accepted solution]

Sorry, but AE does not allow the use of custom brushes.

You can, however roughen the edges of a carefully-masked solid, animating it as a track matte to reveal the charcoal Illustrator layer.

[Maregula]

Thanks. My illustration is a bit complicated, so I'm not going to do that, but thanks for the tip.

[Szalam]

There are third party tools that let you have brushes in After Effects. Paint and Stick comes to mind. You might not need the stick part, but the paint part should be perfect.

[Jules32414914ov92]

It really saddens me that there are so many features that are 100% necessary in this software, that we have to pay for hundreds of third party plugins just so we can have the effect that we want in our video.