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I have 200 layers in Illustrator CS6. I have another set of the same layers but where basic attributes (position, scale) have changed.

Is there a way to import these two "states" into After Effects CS6 so that I end up with 200 layers animating from state 1 to state 2?

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  • It's not entirely clear to me. Will the final animation have 2 frames and moving objects from frame 1 to 2? Feb 2, 2013 at 17:12
  • Yes, what I want to achieve is an animation between "State 1" (for all the 200 objects) and "State 2". I already have the static setups in Illustrator but I want to do the tweening in AE so I need it to recognize that it is the same objects/layers in State 1 as in State 2.
    – dani
    Feb 2, 2013 at 17:36

1 Answer 1

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I have tried the following steps with 4 layers, and it seemed to work.

  1. Name the file with the state 1 set, your-filename-1.ai and the file with the state 2 set your-filename-2.ai. Make sure they are in the same folder
  2. Open After Effects, click File -> Import -> File... and click your-filename-1.ai. Make sure the checkmark is checked as shown below:

enter image description here

To keep all the individual layers, set Import As: to Composition.
3. Now you will have a composition in your project panel named your-filename and a folder named your-filename Layers that contains all the layers. 5. Now you can open the composition and check Frame Blending -> Frame Mix for every layer that you want to tween. 6. Don't forget to enable frame blending. The image below shows how to do this: enter image description here

Now you have an animation from state 1 to state 2. To change the animation playback speed you can use time-stretching on a layer-per-layer basis.

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  • Thanks for helping out! Is there any way to have AE recognize the individual layers so that I can apply a per-layer tween instead of a general frame-blending?
    – dani
    Feb 3, 2013 at 13:56
  • @dani I've updated my answer to recognize individual layers. Feb 3, 2013 at 15:24

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