Pasting Paths in the Adobe Environment

Every time I spend half an hour figuring out a two-second fix, I swear at the gods of the internet for not requiring people to post their useful knowledge in public forums for me to find. Then I realize that I haven't posted since October, and I get all red and shame-faced. 

So here's my latest and greatest quick tip for you:

If you are trying to copy and paste a path from Adobe Illustrator into Adobe After Effects, and you would like to use that path as a motion path, the original path cannot have any fill or stroke applied before you copy it. If it does, even if you paste it into a position or path attribute, it will turn into a mask (or possibly many masks, if you have a dashed stroke). 

If you didn't understand the above paragraph, here's the basic situation:

1. You would like something to move along a path in After Effects, but you have the path stored elsewhere (likely in Illustrator). 
2. This is normally simple - you go into Illustrator, use the Selection tool to select the path, press Ctrl+C to copy. Go into After Effects and click on the Position  attribute of the thing you want to move, and press Ctrl+V to paste. A keyframe should appear where your cursor was. To expand this, hold down Alt and drag the keyframe out to the right. 
3. Unfortunately, if your original path in Illustrator had a fill or a stroke applied, AE will interpret this as a mask - possibly many of them - rather than a stroke. You will be able to see the path, but it will be in bright green, meaning it's a mask. Position paths appear in light purple. 
4. Solution: just make sure you have the bare path selected before you copy/paste across programs.

Did this help you? Have any other ideas for how to accomplish the same thing? Let me know!

What I learned today:June 27, 2012

Meine Damen und Herren, Illustrator...has spellcheck.


I know. I was shocked too. So where is spellcheck in Illustrator? Right here:

More specifically, under the Edit menu in CS5.5. As long as your text is still formatted like text (not rasterized, etc.), spellcheck will...well, check your spelling.

What I learned today: June 25, 2012

Using Command Line Options to Enable/Disable Windows Hibernate Function

File this one under "titles that are longer than the actual post itself." This is incredibly quick and easy, even if you've never used command line anything, ever. 

1. Run the cmd.exe as an administrator. In Windows 7, the easiest way to do this is to click the start button, then type in "cmd" (less quotes). There should be one option under "Programs", cmd.exe. The icon is a little black window with white writing. Right click on it and select "Run as Administrator."

2. Say "Yes" when the window pops up asking if you want to allow changes. (Sorry for lack of screenshots. PicPick isn't the most fantastic screen grabber. 

3. This window should open up: 

4. Type the following in: 

5. Press Enter. You're done! The hibernate option shouldn't even be visible anymore. 

6. To turn hibernate back on, you do the obvious: instead of typing "powercfg -h off," you type "powercfg -h on". 

Learned in the context of TechnoFrolics, who are very cool people who do very cool things and you should go check them out.