• Adobe After Effects

  Constant Value Masking

  Posted by Kevin Tomas on July 16, 2021 at 1:37 pm

  Hello!

  Not really sure what this effect is called, which may be the reason I can’t find the solution to it, so if the answer exists elsewhere please feel free to point me in the right direction.

  So I’m looking for a solution that masks elements at 0% or 100% visibility, rather than cutting through the elements to reveal the shape of the mask.

  To lend more clarity I have two examples, in the first the cube shape is animating revealing text. This is the effect i’d like to replicate, where the letterforms are either “on” or off” (though it actually isn’t really perfect either as it cuts into the letterforms…but its closer). Contrast that to the second example where the letterforms are being cut out rather than activated/deactivated.

  The way I’ve thought about it is like constant color change rather than a gradient color change, but I haven’t been able to find a way to achieve this effect without really complex solutions.

  Hope this all makes sense, and thanks in advance for any help!!

  Kevin

  masking_example_1.mp4 6 MB MPEG-4 - Click to view

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  masking_example_2.mp4 1 MB MPEG-4 - Click to view

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  Walter Soyka replied 5 years, 1 month ago 2 Members · 1 Reply
• 1 Reply

• 

  Walter Soyka

  July 16, 2021 at 2:43 pm

  If you can get away with using a monospaced font (so all the text aligns to a regular grid), then you can build a luma matte with the Mosaic effect (set to match the text grid) and a Threshold effect (to make the luma matte either full-on or full-off).

  If you cannot make the grid regular, then you’ll have to break each element apart and use a sampleImage() expression on each to look at your matte layer and control the opacity of each element individually. This will be a little slow to evaluate and render.

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