Here is a layer from an Illustrator file:
Here is the same layer imported into After Effects:
Notice that the layer's bounding box in AE is not the same as that in Illustrator.
Result? I can no longer accurately snap the anchor point to the edge of the layer using something like the 'Move Anchor Point' script (which apart from anything else should have been added as an AE feature *years* ago). Instead, I now have a gap between the anchor point and the actual edge of the artwork, which means if I now want to make that layer fold downwards (it's the lid of a laptop illustration) it's not rotating from the correct point. I now have to manually fiddle each time I want the anchor point on the edge or corner of a layer. A 2-second operation now complicated into a 10-second operation. These things add up.
Message was edited by: Ian Davies Genius! The forum allows you to paste images into a message but then immediately loses them so you just get 'broken graphic' icons instead.
1 Correct answer
Also logged as a bug report.
I see I can reproduce this in my system as well. it appears to be related to layers that are applied with stroke. this appears to happen when the stroke is set to 'align to center". when setting it to outside or inside it works fine. thanks for submitting the bug report, I will do the same.
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do you have any opacity other than 100% in there or any kind of blending modes? if not, skip this
opacity or blend mode changes to any object in your illustrator file will cause the "create shapes from vector layer" feature to any of the layers to behave in the following manner: your shape layer will have an additional group in the shape hierarchy that will contain paths that constitute your Ai artboard and another merge paths operation. and it's very annoying
it could look like something like this if you work in an HD Preset.
BTW HD preset gives you 2 artboards.. it's actually a good thing:Re: AI (illustrator) layers not showing up in AE (after effects) CC 2014 )
here is the shape hierarchy comparison of Layer 1 that is normal and Layer 2 that has 50% opacity:
as you can see the artboard is here as a group with 3 paths and there is an additional merge path operation to the content of the shape.
What to do?
- if it's after the fact: you can just manually delete the group and the merge path from your shapes, or remove the blend mode / opacity from the layers in Ai (or set them to 100%/set them to normal) which is what Ae is going to do anyway, save the file again, and create shapes from vector layer again.
- before the fact - proper workflow: it is already known that opacity and blend mode (and not only them) don't translate to a corresponding shape anyway, so this makes this an easy workflow decision: if you do plan to convert to shapes, prior to importing to Ae - set your blend modes to normal and opacity to 100% if it's not.
- there's also this script: Explode Shape Layers 3 - aescripts + aeplugins - aescripts.com that is very handy for dealing with the whole conversion of Ai to shapes and it has the "Remove Artboard" feature. this from the script description: If any of your Illustrator layers have non-100% opacity or go outside of the frame, you've probably noticed that converting brings in an empty artboard artifact that gets in the way. No more! Remove it with Remove Artboard.
if this is not the case - can you upload the file? I wan't to examine it. I once had a similar issue after I expanded a pie chart but this does not seem to be the case
The bounding box in Illustrator has always been on the path, not on the stroke. That goes back to forever. AE's bounding box has always been on the pixels generated by a vector path so it's always on the outside of the stroke. I did read your first post, I was emphasizing a point about importing as a comp for other readers.
I checked out Roei's example video and tried to reproduce the problem. I can but I discovered an odd thing. Put the stroke on the inside or the outside of the path and everything is fine. Put it in the middle and the bounding box is off but it's off in a weird way. Have snap to pixel turned on and pixel preview and make sure that the artwork is an even number of pixels high and wide and the stroke is an even number and you should get a clean edge because the numbers work out but you don't. In fact you cannot get a 1 pixel wide stroke to line up with the pixel grid perfectly even with the stroke set to the inside or outside of the path. Here's a 1 pixel wide stroke that is anti aliasing to 3 pixels:
A one pixel stroke on a shape layer out of position will only end up 2 pixels wide (normal interpolation) and will perfectly align if moved around to properly line up:
The wider the stroke the bigger the error in the bounding box and in edge interpolation (antialiasing).
A quick work around is to jump back into Illustrator and expand the artwork's stroke from the Object menu. That way you won't have to edit the artwork to keep exactly the same look. It's also a really good idea to make sure that your AI artwork is created with snap to pixel turned on and that all horizontal and vertical shapes (rectangles, squares, lines) are an even number of pixels high and wide. This eliminates fractional position values and antialiased lines when the artwork is in it's hero (resting) position.
Further research on the bug brought up some other interesting things.
One other point, create a stroke in Illustrator that is an even number of pixels wide precisely lined up with the pixel grid you can make it line up vertically but you can't get it to line up vertically so there is where the error starts.
Final point, converting a vector layer to a shape layer will not give you a stroked path, but a filled shape. The shape will be wider than the width of the stroke unless the stroke is horizontal and perfectly lined up with the pixel grid. There is always an error with vertical lines.
There is definitely some funky math going on here.
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