• Adobe After Effects

  Generate stroke effect isn’t working

  Posted by Masha Tyomkina on May 2, 2017 at 7:23 pm

  Hello,

  I am trying to create the write-on effect with Generate stroke effect over letters (letters have been converted to shapes) and when draw out my path it’s not visible, it’s just an empty path. Same thing happens if I use Write-on effect from the effects & presets menu.

  see screenshot below. In all the tutorials that i’ve watched, the path takes on the stroke qualities that’s in the effect, e.g. 2px white line. Here it’s just empty path ☹ . Any ideas what’s going on? I am using AE 2017

  Thank you!

  

  Kevin Camp replied 9 years, 4 months ago 2 Members · 1 Reply
• 1 Reply

• 

  Kevin Camp

  May 2, 2017 at 11:23 pm

  i think you are running into a masks vs shapes issue…

  the stroke effect works with mask paths (not shape paths).

  you converted your text to a shape layer, so when you try to draw a mask on it, you are actually adding another shape path.

  there are several ways to get around this. the simplest may be to simply draw the mask path directly onto the text layer (rather than converting it to a shape or mask).

  another way would be to convert the text to masks, add the reveal mask path for the stroke effect, then select that that path in the stroke effect (you can select which path to use for the stroke effect at the top of the effect settings, just above the ‘use all paths’ option).

  or you could create a new layer, add the mask path and the stroke effect to that, then use that layer as a track matte foe the shape layer.

  Kevin Camp
  Art Director
  KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

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