Sorry you’re having troubles (and sorry for my late response, I am currently on vacation in Austria, so how’s this for service!? . I can only urge you to step through the same few processes again. make sure the AICB option in the Illustrator prefs is turned ON, and the PDF option is turned OFF. And be sure to remove the brush stroke from that line before you copy it (otherwise the outer thick shape of the stroke is converted to a mask path when copied and pasted), and be sure to select the layer in AE before pasting the path onto it.
Odd as it sounds, sometimes I do the Copy function (cmd-C) three or four times, as doing it once sometimes doesn’t work. I know it sounds bizarre, but give that a shot for me too, and let me know if it works?
I’ll be off email again for a couple of days as I’m driving and such, but I hope this works – or if not, we can hopefully figure something out for you.
All the best from Austria,
Steve

Glad I hit it first try To be honest, 9 times out of ten, a problem copying and pasting a vector path (as a mask or motion data) from Illustrator to After Effects, is directly attributed to that single Preference which should be checked.

The whole copy-and-paste-vector-paths-as-motion-data thing has been in After Effects since version 4.1 (quite some time now, but obviously a rather major event seeing as I can remember it clearly , and it took me ages to figure out why sometimes the copy and paste would work, and other times it wouldn’t.

And still, some ten years later, it’s still something to watch out for.

Anyway, so happy that you got it sorted, and that I could be of service. Enjoy the new techniques!

All the best,

Steve

Thank you very much! You have found the solution! I am now able to paste the path in AE! How did you get to be so great at this???

Rob

Let me know how this works for you,

Steve

Thanks Steve,

Rob

Can you be more specific about where it’s going wrong? Which step of the tutorial does the flow break? And can you list the exact steps? A lot of times, it’s to do with not selecting Import as Composition – Cropped Layers part in step 5, and accidentally bringing the file in as a single item and not a layered composition.

Let me know a little more detail, and I’ll be happy to help

Steve

Glad you like the lesson(s). I know that the following lesson I did showed some advanced tricks for camera movement:
http://www.layersmagazine.com/keep-your-eye-on-the-ball-3d-in-after-effects.html

However, sad to say, Layers Magazine have discontinued the After Effects tutorials, so there won’t be any more from me…

You can still access the first 15 After Effects Podcasts I did, which can be found on iTunes under the name Real World Footage Effects, or via this link:
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=295971174

I’ll still be responding to feedback on existing Layers tutorials in the future, but sorry to say there won’t be any more from me. Unless enough people write to Layers and demand them

All the best,

Steve

Thanks for corporation,

Happy Peters