• Adobe After Effects

  How to reveal a mask in a layer?

  Posted by Mike Cantor on February 7, 2012 at 4:35 am

  Hi,

  I have a layer with 100 odd masks in it. I find it nearly impossible to match the masks as represented by yellow outlines in the comp window with their respective rows in the timeline panel. What I really want is for AE to highlight the row in the timeline panel when I click on a mask, or give me a right click context menu option to “reveal in timeline” or some such.

  Anyone have a nice trick for quickly determining which row in the timeline panel corresponds to a mask selected in the comp window short of toggling the visibility of each of 100 masks until I find the one? (Same goes for paint strokes…)

  Thanks again, folks.

  -mike

  John Cuevas replied 14 years, 2 months ago 3 Members · 2 Replies
• 2 Replies

• 

  Ben G unguren

  February 7, 2012 at 7:13 am

  hmmm… Not sure this will work, but when something is selected, pressing the ‘x’ key will move your timeline to focus on that layer. Maybe it also focuses on masks? Maybe?… (never tried it — let us know!)

  Ben Unguren
  Motion Graphics & Editing
  http://www.mostlydocumentary.com

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• 

  John Cuevas

  February 7, 2012 at 12:10 pm

  If you go to Edit > Preferences > Appearance you can turn on “Cycle Mask Colors”. Everytime you create a new mask it will give it a new color.

  Also if you double click the color swatch of the aleady created mask, you can manually change it’s color.

  Johnny Cuevas, Editor
  Thinkck.com

  “I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
  —THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

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