Layer groups after export for using in after effects

[Aaron Martin]

Hi. I wanted to know the best workflow for using the illustrations designed in affinity for after effects. Sk far i tried different types of eps and psd. They all have issues wither adding white background or rasterizing effects, or ungrouping the grouped items

[Hangman]

Do you have a sample file you can upload..

Are all the elements in your illustration vector in nature or do any elements have fx applied which could result in elements being rasterised on export? If the intention is to keep the elements in vector format, could you apply the same fx in AE instead?

Have you tried selecting all elements and choosing Selection Area or Selection Only from the Area drop down on the export dialogue? This should remove the white background.

Does the white background appear as a separate layer when the graphic is imported into AE, if so can you delete or hide the layer?

[Aaron Martin]

Sample file and after effect screenshot attached below:

2 hours ago, Hangman said:

Are all the elements in your illustration vector in nature or do any elements have fx applied

They are all vector. With very few having shadow effect

2 hours ago, Hangman said:

If the intention is to keep the elements in vector format, could you apply the same fx in AE instead?

Id prefer to have close to the final look done in affinity so when its in AE, only needs to be animated. i could replicate some (not all) effects in AE, but in this case thats not an issue. 

2 hours ago, Hangman said:

Have you tried selecting all elements and choosing Selection Area or Selection Only from the Area drop down on the export dialogue?

Yes

2 hours ago, Hangman said:

Does the white background appear as a separate layer when the graphic is imported into AE, if so can you delete or hide the layer?

It appears as a rasterized version of a vector area with white background. The problem is i grouped them in affinity but when i export it to psd or eps, they ungroup in the process. 

another funny thing i realized, i just drag and dropped this file here from affinity app to browser, it changed its name and format from mask worker.afdesign to affinity photo document.afphoto :))

 

maskWORKER.eps Affinity Photo Document.afphoto

[R C-R]

Not an answer to your workflow question but from your screenshot you are using one of the  Affinity apps for iPads. Since this is the Affinity on Desktop forum, you might get better results if you post to the Affinity on iPad Questions forum instead.

[Hangman]

On 9/1/2021 at 8:39 AM, Aaron Martin said:

Hi. I wanted to know the best workflow for using the illustrations designed in affinity for after effects. Sk far i tried different types of eps and psd. They all have issues wither adding white background or rasterizing effects, or ungrouping the grouped items

Okay, so there are various issues, some are file format specific, others are AD specific. I'll try and cover these below...

Firstly with regards the white background, this shouldn't appear at all regardless of the exported file format if you select the graphics and choose Selection Only from the Export Dialogue window... this will give you the version shown on the right, i.e., no background.

If After Effects is your weapon of choice you basically have four file format options you could use if you want to keep your illustration completely in vector format, .PSD, .PDF, .EPS and .AI, however each have their own nuances.

PSD

PSD probably gives you the closest match when it comes to maintaining your source AD layer structure and grouping however, a number of layers end up rasterised (as you've already seen). Any layer that uses one of the AD fx options will be rasterised, with, it appears, the exception of the mask outer shadow fx (which seems to be Photoshop compatible), so the mask and helmet straps' 3D fx and the helmet's gaussian blur fx end up rasterised as does the logo on both the helmet and the overalls which is an embedded PNG file and so is rasterised by default.

One issue I only discovered by examining your file is that any strokes that use pressure sensitivity, i.e., a pressure profile on the stroke also get rasterised, so the head, hair, hand, eyebrow, eye etc., so if you want to maintain the stroke integrity, as in the stroke width variations, you would first have to expand all the strokes to prevent them being rasterised which gives you the added issue of having to deal with loads of additional layers once you load the file in After Effects (AE).

You could remove the stroke pressure sensitivity to avoid this, which would have little impact on say the appearance of the hair but would be perhaps be more noticeable on the hand and eyebrow (though converting the eyebrow to a curve overcomes the issue), so it all depends on how important it is for your illustration. The benefit of doing this is that you then maintain a vector shape with fill and stroke intact rather than a layer for each.

Another issue (which I think maybe a bug) is that some (not all) nested layers are for some unknown reason being rasterised when exported to .PSD, in your illustration this affects the eye but can be remedied be unnesting the layers without changing the look of the eye.

There is an additional problem though which appears to be an AD bug, elliptical grads are being rasterised when exported in PSD format, even when no transformations are made to the initial shape so this is affecting the grads in the eye for example. It doesn't affect radial grads however.

I think you could relatively easily replace the 3D fx on the straps with linear gradients and the gaussian blur fx on the helmet with a radial grad which would then prevent these items from being rasterised.

You could reasonably easily recreate the badge with logo in AD so it is in vector format which again will keep the whole illustration in vector format once imported into AE.

Alternatively you could just increase the resolution of you AD document say to 300dpi and not worry about any rasterisation once imported into AE, it all depends how and where the finished animation is being used, i.e, is it for web or for video?

PDF

This ends up with a messy layer structure and suffers from some but not all the same issues present with .PSD, as in rasterises the helmet straps' 3D fx, the helmet's gaussian blur fx and the mask outer shadow fx, however it automatically converts any strokes using pressure to a separate layer which means for you particular illustration you have lots of additional layers to deal with.

It is also rasterising all gradations which have been transformed, e.g., the linear gradation on the toggle and the overall stripes and the eye highlight elliptical grad but I think this is again an AD bug.

EPS

Similar issues compunded by the loss of a number of clipping paths resulting in problems with the eye and the overall stripes.

AI

This is pretty much the same as a PDF (though not completely), as in when you save a .AI file you have the .AI and a .PDF in the same container but of course AE will read the format natively and therefore keep everything pretty much as created when continuous rasterisation is on in AE. Do you have access to Illustrator?

SVG

Whilst AE doesn't support SVG, it is perhaps the best option when outputting a pure vector file from AD. If you replace the mask shadow with a manual shadow and apply a gaussian blur fx instead of outer shadow fx and then set Rasterise to 'Nothing' in the SVG export settings (More Dialogue) you get a pure vector output (apart from the logos which I think are of sufficient resolution not worry about anyway unless you want to replace them with vector versions). The only fx you lose the 3D fx on the helmet strap but it is so subtle anyway I don't think you'd notice and you could always replace it with a linear grad, (see attached SVG).

The slight frustration with the SVG export is that every single element is exported in its own group. I have no idea why?

If After Effects is only a means to an end and is only being used because that is what you have and are used to using rather than it being integral to the project it may be worth considering some SVG animation software, maybe something like Keyshape https://www.keyshapeapp.com/ which opens SVG files exported from Affinity Designer and exports the following...

• SVG for web pages
• Lottie animations for native Android, iOS, macOS, Windows and React Native apps*
• Animated vector drawables for native Android apps*
• Animated GIFs for social media sites
• MPEG-4 movies for YouTube and other video sites
• Image sequences and sprite sheets for games
• Animated PNG and WebP images

Conclusion

No easy solution here but hopefully a few pitfalls to be aware of when creating graphics in the first place if you want to use them in After Effects. Unfortunately AD is not as compatible with AE as native AI is.

Site Man Mask.svg

[Aaron Martin]

@Hangman

wow. God bless you for your thorough explanation. 

[Aaron Martin]

23 hours ago, Hangman said:

when you save a .AI file

I can save as AI in affinity? How?

[Old Bruce]

1 minute ago, Aaron Martin said:

I can save as AI in affinity? How?

You can't. I think that was about working in Illustrator, to show how the AI file structure can be different/difficult.

[Hangman]

You can't, though I don't think an .ai file differs too much from a .pdf file. for the reasons mentioned in my earlier post. I'm sure there are differences but I couldn't tell you what they are specifically.

There are various on-line file format conversion utilities but I tried to convert an .svg to a .ai file recently and it failed. The only way I know of creating a genuine .ai file is to use Illustrator which likely negates what you are trying to achieve here.

[Hangman]

A couple of things, have you tried bringing PDF files into After Effects, apart from the issues raised above, they should behave in the same way as native .AI files.

Another thought, if you're running iPadOS 13 or later then you could download Vectornator, https://www.vectornator.io/ which is a free vector app that does claim to export AI files (though it appears the file gets uploaded to iCloud for conversion by Vectornator to achieve this) to see how it compares.

I don't have an iPad to test it on but I'd be interested to know a few things...

1. How it exports strokes with a pressure curve applied, i.e. does it export it as an editable vector stroke without needing to expand the stroke?
2. It looks as though Vectornator uses true vector brushes, I'm not 100% sure but if so it would be really great to know as that opens up so many possibilities that AD is currently lacking in v 1.X.X?
3. Does it do a better job exporting your illustration for use in AE than AD does, i.e., without the current AD rasterisation and gradient bug issues?

[Aaron Martin]

I just tried Vectornator on both ipad and mac. Gotta say. Its no where as stable as affinity. I made several shapes with effects on affinity, exported them to pdf and opened em in vectornator. It couldnt export to a.i, kept loading with no result. So i couldnt get the ai files out of it. But i played around with it and sent u a video of how the effects are translated after importing the pdf version of the affinity file. 
 

 

Vectornator Test.pdf Affinity Photo Document.afphoto

[R C-R]

On 9/4/2021 at 6:11 AM, Hangman said:

Another thought, if you're running iPadOS 13 or later then you could download Vectornator, https://www.vectornator.io/ which is a free vector app that does claim to export AI files (though it appears the file gets uploaded to iCloud for conversion by Vectornator to achieve this) to see how it compares.

I am not certain about this because I do not have nor am I going to sign up to create an account, it appears that at least for the iPad version, the file is uploaded to the Adobe Creative Cloud, not iCloud. IOW, it is not Vectornator doing the export, it is (probably) AI via the cloud.

[Hangman]

@Aaron Martin Um, that's a little disappointing, though some interesting psychedelic effects 😂. It seems to handle pretty much everything apart from basic linear grads really badly. Vectornator sure do big themselves up as being the best thing since sliced bread and they also put Affinity Designer down quite a bit on their website (there's a fair bit of mis-infomation actually) but I had higher hopes for it.

Did you get to try using a PDF in place of a .AI for use in After Effects, is it yourself working in AE or do you need to give the illustration to someone else? Was Keyshape a viable alternative or would it not really fit into your workflow? What is the finished output for you illustration, is it video, web or something else?

@R C-R You're quite right, I mis-read that on their site, it is uploaded to Adobe Creative Cloud, not iCloud, does that mean there is someone sitting in a little room at Adobe HQ waiting for files to be uploaded so they can open them in Illustrator and then re-save them and spit them back out as .AI files... 😊

[Aaron Martin]

Hi, Yes, my current solution is to avoid using effects that become rasterised in PSD and send the PSD export. Works fine so far, the only hassle is to expand pressure curved strokes.

[Aaron Martin]

By the way. (Shameless plug here) i made a website for everyone to share affinity exclusive source files. Im also trying to promote it a little here. You can check and if u enjoyed it. Sharing it will be very appreciated. 

Www.affinityelites.com

Note: i also know it could be a little buggy in some places, thats because im not a professional web developer and this is my first website.