In this tutorial, we'll cover how to use the Adobe Illustrator graph tool and how to export to Adobe After Effects and Maxon Cinema 4D. We'll outline the best practices for breaking apart the graph object, choosing the right layer sequence, and animating and adding textures. We'll also go over how to use the Vector Import feature in Cinema 4D and how to break apart the Vector Import for more flexibility.
Video Transcription
Hello, this is Eugene Peterson from Noble Desktop. In this, the third of three tutorials, I'm going to show you how to use the Adobe Illustrator graph tool and focus on exporting to Adobe After Effects, Maxon Cinema 4D, and Maxon Cinema 4D Light.
Adobe Illustrator graph tool export to After Effects and Cinema 4D: Introduction. Exporting your finished chart to Adobe After Effects or Cinema 4D is easy. We'll look at importing an Illustrator graph into After Effects, Cinema 4D Light (which is bundled with Creative Cloud) and Cinema 4D full version.
FYI, charts can be created natively and animated in both After Effects and Cinema 4D, but if your design calls for a static chart in After Effects, exporting the graph as is will work.
So, here's our graph in Illustrator. We'll import it as is into After Effects, and import it as footage. We can certainly move the position, rotate, and scale whatever can be animated as a whole, as most charts in After Effects are animated.
We will need to break apart the graph object and place each component object on its own named layer. So, the best practice is to duplicate the graph object before breaking apart, so that you will still have access to the data sheet link if you need to edit the graph values later.
So, we'll take our graph object and duplicate it. Here's our copy for safe keeping. And we'll take the other graph object and break it apart by ungrouping. So, I'm going to delete some extraneous four paths.
We'll select Layer 1 and in the Layers palette to layers sequence, and we have four layers. Oh, we'll delete that. Okay, so now we have our four pie slices: two, three, four, and five. This will save as.
And now this is ready to be imported into After Effects. So, back in After Effects, we'll import the file we just created. However, when we import it, rather than importing it as footage which imports it as one layer, we'll do composition retain layer sizes, so your layout will look exactly the way it did in Illustrator.
I'll just change the background color so we can see it a little better. And here's our pie. Notice we have the four layers. A best practice is to continuously rasterize, so that the shapes always look crisp. These are now independent objects.
Also, something to note is that the Anchor Point is in the center of the shape. So, if you're animating from the center, you may want to move the Anchor Point, and that way it'll rotate around the center.
Now, once you have independent layers, one thing you could do is work with textures, and use the Illustrator objects as masks. So, we'll import a pattern.
Having imported my texture, I'll add it to the timeline, mask it onto Layer Two, and there we go.
Exporting an Illustrator graph to Cinema 4D seems like it may be easier than After Effects, but you still have the same options. In Cinema 4D we go to the Generator menu and choose Vector Import. We link up our file, zoom in a bit and add an extrude. This is a live link so if changes are made in Illustrator, we click reset and our change is applied.
We can also change colors and data. There are pros and cons with the Vector Import, it is a linked file so it's locked and we don't have as many options as if we break it apart. We do a quick setup: animate later, offset and path spread, go to the beginning and set to -157, and path to 115 then keyframe this. We get a nice assembly type animation. We break the Vector Import into objects, right click and go to Current State to Object, and we don't need the Vector Import anymore. We have four splines, one for each object. We add a bit of color and animation on the z-axis for more flexibility.
That's all there is to it. Saving the Illustrator file in a save down version (version 8) allows us to work with the four paths and animate each one individually. I hope you've enjoyed learning how to use the Adobe Illustrator graph tool. This has been Eugene Peterson for Noble Desktop.