Animate imported Illustrator vector layers in After Effects by applying the CC Sphere effect to create a dynamic spinning globe animation. Learn how to control lighting, shading, and keyframing to refine the look and motion of your 3D-style layer.
Key Insights
- Apply the CC Sphere effect from the Perspective effects panel to a transparent Illustrator-based vector layer to simulate a 3D spinning globe, adjusting the radius to control size while avoiding pixelation.
- Use lighting and shading controls such as Ambient, Diffuse, and Specular to customize how highlights and shadows appear, mimicking real 3D surface materials like metal or plastic.
- Noble Desktop demonstrates how to animate the sphere’s Y rotation over two seconds and loop the animation using expressions, with optional easing techniques for smoother motion transitions.
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In this lesson, we'll be animating some imported vector layers from Illustrator. The file for this we'll be using is HUD-started. You'll find that in the shape animation folder.
So this project has a shape animation HUD composition. You'll see it right here. It's actually got a couple different layers I've set it up for you.
There's a text layer, that's the chevron. I'm going to turn that off, the visibility off for a second. World map, import from Illustrator, a couple text layers.
But most of these are actually imported vector layers from Illustrator. A lot of times, Illustrator and Photoshop are used to layout content in its final form, especially if you're doing ads and stuff. And in Artifact, you're just animating and working with those.
So this is the world map we're going to start with. And the first thing I would do is just turn it into a sphere. So in effects and presets, I can search for the word sphere.
And there is in perspective this CC sphere effect. I'm just going to double click to apply it to the highlighted layer. And I get that, I get a sphere.
Okay, that's what it does. Because the layer is transparent, you can actually see through it. So let's do the back, no problem at all.
It's actually why the render full outside and inside actually work differently because you can see through it. If this was a solid layer, there's no transparency, then that effect wouldn't work. Go back to full.
So radius is the size. I'm going to bump that up to maybe about 250 or so. Be careful because if you raise it too high, you will start to notice degradation that it will actually get pixelated.
I'll turn back to switch modes. Normally turning this option on will fix that, but you'll see that it actually doesn't in this case because it's an effect making it larger. So I'm just going to go to 250.
The way you get around it is start with a physically larger layer. So that's good. Offset would move it from the center.
I want it in the center. That's not a problem. Light and shading control the source of light, for example.
They control the strength of the light, the color, that sort of thing. So you control how the shadows and lights are looking on this. Shading is actually how dark and light the areas are.
Ambient, for example, is the darkest areas. I'll raise that a bit. So it's not quite so harsh there.
Diffuse is the mid-tones and specular are the highlights. If I raise that, for example, at a really hot hotspot right there. I'm going to reset that back to its default, which is 10.
That's good. Okay. I can also adjust other settings like kind of reflective, more like metal or plastic, that sort of thing.
That's all in here. It's mimicking the effects you see in real 3D programs. I'm going to hide those.
Now, this is not a 3D layer. It's an effect that makes it appear to be 3D, which means if I rotate it, it's not going to change much. But if I change the rotation in the effect itself, well, that'll give me this nice little 3D-looking effect, like so.
So I'm just going to reset that. I'll just make a quick little animation for this. I'm thinking that I'll probably make a, I don't know, let's do like a two-second animation.
So at the beginning of my timeline, I'll turn on the stopwatch rotation Y. Okay. If I double-click on the property, it reveals everything. I don't really want to do that.
So I'm just going to press U to reveal just the keyframe property. But if you double-click on the property itself, it would actually reveal the entire effect. If you double-click on the effect, nothing happens.
So I'll go to two seconds, just 200, return. And then I'm just going to make that rotate once. So go back to the beginning, you can see that's what I get.
And again, I'm going to hold down Option or Alt, click on the stopwatch. I'm going to add the looping effect we previously used. Return.
It's good. It doesn't need any properties in here. If I wanted to ping-pong it, no problem at all, back and forth, I think it'll look weird.
I'm not going to ease this, I think it looks weird if I ease that, but it's up to you. So right now, this is how it repeats, just consistent. If you want it to ease it, I mean, that's fine.
Either with an easy ease, right-click keyframe system, easy ease. It would do that. That's not bad.
I mean, it's not what I'm looking for. Or if you want it to add a custom ease, have fun. So I'm going to hold down Command, click on the stopwatches, they go back to being no easing.
So again, it's a consistent spin like this. That's not bad. I like that.