In this lesson, I want to animate some vector artwork.
So here I have an encapsulated post script file .eps that is opened in Adobe
illustrator's vector editing application.
As with the photograph, I want to create separate layers, however this time I don't have an
issue with cloning in a background.
If I turn off the visibility of some of these layers we can see that each layer is complete
in and of its self.
Another option for exporting is doing so in order to preserve the vector nature of this
artwork.
Doing so means that we have a lot more flexibility with resolution in Motion however there are
some other disadvantages, so in order to export these layers, you may think you can just turn
off the visibility of the layers you don't want and export.
But that will not work.
In order to export just a specific layer or object, you need to delete all the rest of the objects
out of the image.
So I'm going to start with this sign.
I'm going to select it by clicking this target, which we'll select everything within this
group here.
Then from the Select menu, I'll choose Inverse, to select everything else and then press the
delete key.
Which leaves us with just this sign, just everything in this group here.
From here from the File menu, I'm going to go down to Save a Copy.
This will create a copy of my work with just this element.
I'll call it Banner.
In this case, I'm not able to check the Use Artboards checkbox.
We'll see the impact on that in a moment.
And I'll press Save.
I'll use all the defaults here and press OK.
And then Command+"z" to undo.
And simply repeat that same process.
So you can save your separate vector layers as vector objects in the .ai or .pdf formats.
So here I have a folder that contains our .pdf files which are vector images.
So I'll select them all and drag them into this new Motion project.
And first we can see they're very small by default.
Let's also take this sign and put it at the top so we can see it.
If we go to the Inspector in Properties, we can see it's 100% Scale.
Notice also each of these has it's own Anchor Point that isn't necessarily in the center
of composition.
In other words, we've lost our overall composition layout of each of these elements.
And if we reposition them to where they belong, it's Anchor Point will not be centered in
the composition.
So it will require moving those Anchor Points.
However one benefit of working with these vector objects is this.
I'm going to drag a corner with the shift and option keys held down in order to scale
proportionately around the Anchor Point.
Notice as it gets very large, it gets very blurry.
In the Inspector we can see it's over 2000%.
But because it's a vector object, we can go to the Media tab here.
Select the underlying media.
And then in the Inspector, it has it's own Media tab and we can see a checkbox for Fixed
Resolution.
Which is checked or enabled by default in order to have the best possible performance.
But if we uncheck that checkbox, then this object will do something called continuously
rasterize.
So it gets redrawn at every scale so we can make it as big as we want and it will still remain
crisp and clear.
I'll back to the Layers menu and select it and then in the Properties Inspector, I'll
scale it up even larger.
So now we're over 4000% and we can still see it's nice and crisp.
So that's the advantage of working with vector objects in this case saved as .pdf files.
If you want to do a move or zoom very close and move through them, it's a great way to
work with them.
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