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turning text to a mask for 3D stroke
Hi am new to ae and im trying to do a nice effect using trapcodes 3d stroke. it works with masks, but i cant do text that well with masks. I want to convert some test to masks so they can work with 3d stroke.
if there is a better solution please let me know. gracias from a newbie.
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9 Replies
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Type out your text, then select the text, right click in the comp window on the text (make sure you’re still using the text tool, cmd-t/ctrl-t) and the second option in the contextual menu should be ‘Create Outlines.’ This will make a new solid layer with masks that match the text.
Also, for future reference the sixth option in the contextual menu allows you to convert to paragraph text, so you can define bounds of the text field. Well… I was happy to find that one day anyway (;
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
you rock thanks!
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wait that doesnt work for some reason. it makes out lines, but it doesn’t make masks out of them. i need some wayt o make a mask out of this text.
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The masks are on the solid layer that the ‘Create Outlines’ commands creates.
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
there is no mask subheading under my outlines layer. im using cs3 if that makes any difference. it just has Contents and Transform subheadings
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I have both AE 7.0 and CS3 on my PC. When I select “Create Outlines” in AE 7.0 it creates mask paths the same shape of the individual letters of the text on a new solid with I can then use with 3D Stroke. When I do the same thing in CS3 rather than create masks it creates a Shape layer with individual letter shapes which gives a greater deal of control over the letters but does NOT seem to work with 3D stroke, this is very annoying and I cant even click on the “Mask” button to create masks instead of shapes. Does anyone know if this is a bug in CS3 or intended?, or if there is a workaround??.
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After some experimenting Iv’e found something that works.
1-Create Your Text
2-With the Text Layer Selected in the Timeline goto Layer > Auto-Trace
3-Click OK, This traces a freeform mask path around the individual letters
4-Apply Trapcode 3D Stroke to the traced layer
5-Turn the Eyeball off in the original Text Layer
6-Tweak Trapcode 3D Stroke as neededThis works but is not perfect and you may need to tweak settings in the Auto-Trace dialog box to get it as you want (read the CS3 help file).
-Regards
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oh yeah. thats nice. thanks alot
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I was just looking for a quick way to do the write-on text effect and this does the trick! In CC you right click your text layer and choose “create masks from text” and it will create a solid with masks in the shape of your text. Change the solid color to the color you want. Then apply stroke, check the “all masks” and “sequentially” boxes, keyframe “end” from 0 to 100, and there you go. No painstakingly tracing text with the pen tool…this speeds up the process 100x…thanks adobe!
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