Any alternative to the now deceased Ampede LayerLink?

Question

I need to import an illustrator file with 50 layers, that I need to animate. You've guessed it - it's a map of the United States. I have the file already in Illustrator, and I have been able to import the file into motion but it flattens the image. I guess LayerLink is out of business and there isn't a version that will work for Motion 3.
Anybody have any other suggestions? Any help would be GREATLY appreciated.

Answer 1

There's two things you could try:
1.) From Illustrator, do an "Export", from the File Menu. In the "Format" area select "Photoshop (psd)". After you click "Export" you will be presented with one more dialog box. The 2nd half of that box has an option to "Write Layers" - make sure this is selected. Choose your "ppi". Bigger's probably better, maybe? Point is, when you get to Motion, these items won't be vectors anymore, they'll be bitmapped.
Then as far as getting those layers into Motion: drag the new file from File Browser to the Canvas and hold it there. A panel will fly up, you'll see an option to "Import All Layers". That's what you'll want. Now start animating.
2.) This might be more convoluted, and thus send you flying back to option #1, but just wanted to throw it out there: If you don't own After Effects, download the trial and import this file into it. You'll want to bring it in as a "composition" - thus preserver your layers, in their respective positions. (As long as you select, "Document Size" NOT "Layer Size" when importing.) Any way, you can get more info on this elsewhere, for example, the AE help files. Now, if you're not familiar with AE this might not be the way to go because you'll end up spending some time just figuring out how the sucker works. So that could surely be a deal-breaker. However, one cool advantage of this would be that if you find yourself needing to edit the VECTOR files for any reason, you can do an "Open in Editor" - Illustrator will launch. You make your edits, come back to AE and voila - the layers are update to reflect your edits. Again, I understand that this might not be worth it and you might have stopped reading this already to head back up to option #1. There are obvious drawbacks to this technique!
Good luck. Let us know how it goes.