1.0 Free panel for Illustrator
After Effects only reads the top-level layers of an .ai file — everything
inside a group is flattened on import. FrameSmith is a panel that unpacks that structure, registers
the artwork to your comp, audits the file for what AE renders badly, and exports
one clip-aligned file per layer.
How it works
FrameSmith docks next to your artboard like any other panel. The audit changes nothing, so you can look before you touch anything. Here is the whole thing in under two minutes.
One button saves yourfile_AE.ai and switches to it. Your master is never touched.
Read-only. It lists every blocker and warning, and how many layers AE will actually see.
Fix what it flagged, flatten the groups, register the canvas, export. Then import.
Everything inside
The safety net and the fixes that have to happen before anything else.
The reason this exists. After Effects reads top-level layers only.
001_character_arm_leftMatch the artboard to the comp and register the artwork to it.
Read-only. Nothing here changes your document — start on this tab.
One file per top-level layer, ready to drop into a comp.
The details
Illustrator does not undo scripted batch operations cleanly, so the first button saves a copy and repoints the open document at it. Everything destructive lands on the copy.
Pulling artwork out of a clipped group deletes the mask without telling you. Clipped groups are always treated as leaves — same for groups carrying opacity or a blend mode.
New layers always insert at the top, so the unpack plan is built from the bottom of the stack upwards. What you see in Illustrator is what arrives in After Effects.
Every operation writes to a log you can read and save. Where Illustrator's colour-mode command is unreliable, the panel checks whether it actually worked and tells you when it didn't.
Text is outlined through Illustrator's real API, not a menu item, so it is predictable and keeps names and state. Where only a menu command exists, the tool says so instead of pretending.
It reads. That's all. You can run it on a file you care about, on a deadline, without a copy and without thinking about it.
Install
FrameSmith is signed, so it installs like any other extension. No Terminal, no debug mode. Same steps on macOS and Windows.
One signed .zxp file, about 42 KB.
Get the free ZXP Installer from aescripts, open it and drag FrameSmith-1.0.0.zxp onto the window.
Restart Illustrator, then Window → Extensions → FrameSmith. Dock it wherever you like.
Updating? Install the new .zxp over the old one. Coming from 0.1? Delete the old FrameSmith-for-Illustrator folder from Adobe's CEP extensions folder first.
FAQ
1.0 is signed, so it installs with the ZXP Installer like any other extension — no Terminal and no debug mode. It also fixes the empty grey panel that 0.1 showed in Illustrator 2025 and later. The audit tab is read-only and safe to try on anything; for the rest, use "Save AE-ready copy" first. If something breaks, tell me what the status bar said.
Yes — same technology, same design system. It's a CEP extension, which is what a .zxp contains; Illustrator loads them exactly the way After Effects does. Illustrator has no public UXP plugin API for third-party developers yet, so CEP is the route, and the panel is built so the document code survives that migration when it comes.
Illustrator 2024 and later, on macOS and Windows. It may well run on older versions — it uses long-standing scripting APIs — but that's untested.
The Audit tab cannot: it only reads. The Prep, Layers and Canvas tabs do modify the document, and Illustrator's undo does not reverse scripted batch operations cleanly — which is exactly why the first button on the Prep tab saves a copy and switches to it, leaving your original untouched on disk. Every destructive action also asks before it runs.
Illustrator exposes no scripting API for outlining a stroke, so the only route is driving a menu command against the selection. That works, but it behaves unpredictably on compound paths, width-profiled strokes and live effects. The button is there if you want it; the audit reports rather than silently applying it.
That's the point of the pair. Shared naming conventions and palette sync between the two halves are next on the list, so the Illustrator side names things in a way the After Effects side already knows how to find.
Yes. Free to download and use in your work, commercial projects included.