Illustrator Import to After Effects

Hey all,
Its been a while since i ever had a problem with importing things, in fact its never been a problem until now, and no-one seems to know whats wrong.
+ i'll post links to images as well to fully show whats wrong.
Problem:
Im working on a project where i animate a character made in illustrator and then importing it to after effects. I made the character fine in after effects see here:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v77/nethstar/My_o_Fine.jpg
Then after saving it and importing it into after effects, some of the layers seem to want to move layer order or change shape, as seen here:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v77/nethstar/My_o_Bad.jpg
(As you can see the arm has gotten smaller, and the hand in the back is not layer behind the leg as it was in illustrator)
Im not sure what else to mention apart from, i've worked illustrator for the whole thing, there are around 57 layers and it is quite a complex layout but i managed to make everything work that wat previously with another project but for some reason this time it wont change. Ive also tried chnging the save settings many times but not really made any difference.
Im using CS3 versions of both Illustrator and AE.
If anyone could help i would be highly greatful.
Thanks in adance.
P.S: It works when i use a photoshop file but not with illustrator, but i find it less time consuming to work with an illustrator file in case ineed to make adjustments with the the character. ALSO i found that layer order does not stay when importing from illustrator. eg - Layer 1, 5, 2, 3, 6, 4, ordering in illustrator will come out layers 1,2,3,4,5,6...and its REALLY fustrating because tutorials seem to do it with ease.

Re: layer order: You may have some invisible stuff inbetween which could throw AE off track. Removing those invisible elements may improve matters. Also check your layer naming. Give your layers respective names to enforce correct ordering. Short of that - could be a bug, could be not. I'm doing not enough work with AI to gauge this.
Re: changes in size: This may hinge on the use of compound paths and clipping masks. There are a few known issues with this, some of which have been addressed in the 8.0.2 update, but not all of them. I'm afraid only CS4 will fully resolve the matter, so in the meantime you will probably have to find different ways to deal with it. One thing you can attempt is to disable the "Preview" option for at least one of your critical layers. This will enforce a different treatment of the file and AE will re-calculate the bounding boxes instead of using the info stored in the file for the preview.
Mylenium

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I need help with Importing my Illustrator file into After Effects, I'm having problems

Hello everyone, I'm new to this forum. I am having a hard time importing this Illustrator file into After Effects. Here's how it is in the Illustrator file
As you can see, I made all the layers separate so then when I import it I can work on each and every one. (I want them to bloom from the center)
but when I import to After Effects (I ask to import the composition and retain the layers), the size looks completely different:
Then when I drag down the layers folder to the Comp Panel, the layer order starts getting really messed up. Here is what I am talking about
What am I doing wrong and how can I fix it? Also how can I figure out how to let the petals boom? I'm thinking of scaling the center larger first and then scaling the petals from there. but first I have to figure out how to get the size distortion and the layer orders right. Thanks.

You need to open the comp not drag layers in a new comp.

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3 questions
For the longest time I have been told when importing PSDs to
After effects, in order to keep circles circles (proper ratios) I had
to make a 720 540 PSD file and then crunch it down to 720 486. Then import the file to a D1 NTSC 720 486 after effects comp and everything works fine.And it does and always has
I have now been told otherwise. People claim they view in DV NTSC view
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That view mode in Photoshop is for viewing purposes only though so this
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right in that mode but that doesn't make sense. Going 540 to 486 is
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So to simplify my questions are the following.
1. Is there a way to avoid creating a 720 540 PSD and then crunching
down to 486? And somehow keep circles circles and photographs not
stretched.
2. Why does the DV viewing mode in Photoshop effect the importing into
After Effects if it's just for preview purposes?
That said I like that viewing mode in Photoshop because when I do my
720 540 to 720 486 crunch I can see that everything will look fine.
If anyone can help it would be much appreciated. I've been fine doing what I'm doing but for the last couple years I have been told there's a quicker way and haven't found anyone who knows.
And my final question #3 is
How do you import an illustrattor file into After Effectcs with
layers? I know how to bring sa photoshop file in with layers but everytime I import an illustrator file in , it comes in flat as one layer.
Thanks very much to those who can help.
J.

>Is there a way to avoid creating a 720 540 PSD and then crunching
>down to 486? And somehow keep circles circles and photographs not
>stretched.
Not really and then "crunching down" is very much a matter of point of view. The real question is: Can you accept the variations e.g. in antialiasing introduced by creating your work with non-square pixels in Photoshop. Apparently doing so will affect horizontal sampling more than vertical and as there is a difference in how AE and PS deal with these matters, the result would be different. It also extends to the matter of how practical it would be to work with such files if you need to move them to applications that don't provide PAR correction...
>Why does the DV viewing mode in Photoshop effect the importing into
>After Effects if it's just for preview purposes?
It doesn't. The people told you only half the facts. Photoshop's PAR correction is just for viewing purposes, that's true, but it does not mean that PS itself would be unable to deal with non-square pixels. Whenever you create a files based on such presets, PS will correctly embed that information for saving, hence programs like AE that are able to extract that information, will use it to correctly interpret items.
>How do you import an illustrattor file into After Effectcs with
>layers?
You can't. In the strict sense Illustrator has no layers, only objects and groups and since they can be infinitely combined in the funniest ways, it's a hell of a thing to read them right. Maybe in CS5 after all these years... (or even later).
Mylenium

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Message was edited by: kiwikiwi

Thank you so much! Although it's not exporting quite as clear as before, it's much, MUCH better now that I've corrected the timeline dominance - I'd say 95% better; and it will be re-compressed by my clients for web streaming so it doesn't need to be perfect - but the initial quality was garbage.
I suspect when I exported my T2i footage as a ProRes file, than imported into After Effects, then back into FCP something happened along the way that messed up the quality slightly. Although the only difference in my method between FCP5 and 7 was converting to ProRes; which I only did for editing purposes as the native T2i footage needs to be rendered... which ended up being redundant as all my After Effects work needed to be rendered anyway. Ho hum.
Do you think the ProRes conversion could account for the quality loss? It wasn't just the footage that was grainy/fuzzy, it was also the After Effects graphic work, which is why I didn't think the converstion could be the culprit. Hm. I'll have to look into this more!
Thanks again - and so sorry for my delayed reply, I went on vacation shortly after I posted that message and only just got back to this project now
Message was edited by: kiwikiwi

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49_wbdKALQk
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AVI?
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There are lots of ways to get movies and projects and other things back and forth between After Effects and Premiere Pro. This page outlines them:
"Working with Premiere Pro and After Effects"
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Please look at this video, work in progress.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49_wbdKALQk
The opening, featuring a ribbon of videos, was created in After Effects, using Digieffects Freeform.
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AVI?
MOV
MP4
And any other settings that will result with the highest qualiity videos for importing.
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I need to update illustrator, flash and after effects and I keep getting the same error 49 over and over

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The top pic. is a Ai file.
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Dave is right. See this:
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Todd_Kopriva wrote:
> As a work around in the meantime, Adobe recommends when working with
Illustrator CS5 in comjunction with AE to save illustrator files as
Illustrator CS4 files and then import for use in CS5 AE.
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