• Adobe After Effects

  Gears and Cogs Tutorial. Mask Trouble.

  Posted by Paul Whishaw on February 19, 2009 at 8:38 pm

  OK, I’m trying the gears and cogs tutorial in AE.

  https://library.creativecow.net/articles/zwar_chris/cogs1.php

  And I’ve got stuck quite early on. At the stage where I create a mask to fill in my cogs. The tutorial is for AE 5 and I’m in AE CS3. My mask will not cooperate. See pics.

  I am having trouble creating a ROUND mask. The tutorials mask is immediately round and perfectly centered. My mask starts out oblong and any attempt to change the settings for the size really messes up my mask. If I try making it uniform the thing disappears altogether.

  What the heck am I doing wrong???? How do I get a round mask that is centered? See below link.

  https://pdvpro.com/mask/

  Filip Vandueren replied 17 years, 6 months ago 2 Members · 2 Replies
• 2 Replies

• 

  Paul Whishaw

  February 20, 2009 at 2:37 am

  it was less the resizing the mask and more creating a perfectly centered mask. I’ve since found the align tools in AE and I also created a better cog in Illustrator.

  Paul Whishaw
  PDVpro.com
  “If it moves, We’ll Shoot it”
• 

  Filip Vandueren

  February 22, 2009 at 1:02 am

  If you create a solid that’s square, and then double click on the oval mask tool, you’ll get a circle that fits to your current layer.

  I then usually resize with a keycombo that keeps the resizing centered (command or ctrl on pc), and at the same aspect ratio (shift)

  so cmd+shift (mac) or ctrl+shift (pc)

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