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Stroke Around Tack Matted Object
Hello,
Thanks in advance to anyone who can help.
So I’ve got a fairly complex animated shape track matted. I’m attaching a series of screencaps below, so you can see how the shape changes through its animation.
I understand that strokes are typically placed on the paths of masks. However, this particular animted shape was too complex for me to mask out, and I don’t think I would have been able to make the arrows a consistent shape through drawing it by hand.
So masking out this shape isn’t an option for me, unless there’s a way to automatically mask the exact shape and it’s changing shape automatically.
Is there a way for me to place a stroke around a track matted object like this?
Is there a way to place more than one concentric stroke around the object?
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9 Replies
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Yes. The Vegas effect (even though it doesn’t look right when you first apply it) is the way to go. Set it to work on the alpha channel and composite behind the original, make there not be any repetitions, and remove all the transparency options along the length of the stroke.
However, if you did it using a Track Matte, you would have to precompose it and then apply the Vegas effect. If you did it with the Set Matte effect or the Calculations effect (or some other channel effect), you won’t need to do the precomp thing first.
– The Great Szalam
(The \’Great\’ stands for \’Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble\’)No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.
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Thank you very much for your response.
I’m having a bit of trouble following you though.
As I mentioned above, I did use a track matte to create this shape.
I have it precomposed and inserted into another composition. I’ve applied the Vegas effect, but it doesn’t quite work.
It just puts some white areas into the arrows rather than create a stroke around the shape, and I’ve attached a screencap to show what it’s doing.
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I don’t see the Vegas effect; I see the stroke effect.
Are you trying to put the stroke around the green thing or around the arrows AND the green thing?– The Great Szalam
(The \’Great\’ stands for \’Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble\’)No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.
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Thanks again for your response!
Oops, that’s my fault. I had the Vegas effect on an asset inside of that composition. I’ve taken off of that, and replaced the stroke effect on that composition with the Vegas effect and here’s the result:
It seems to be working to some extent, but it doesn’t seem to want to go around the arrows, where the gradient starts to change to red from yellow.
I’ve tried different blend modes with much the same result.
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And I’m still not getting a very hard edge on the “stroke”
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Thanks again for your responses!
“Are you trying to put the stroke around the green thing or around the arrows AND the green thing?
Around the arrows AND the green thing. It’s all one object in the composition.
But the Vegas effect only seems to want to go around where it is yellow. It stops wherever its green, and also wherever the gradient turns into red on the arrows.
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Have you tried adjusting the mid-point and end opacity? i was able to get a stroke all the way around a similar shaped object by increasing those
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Thanks for your response!
Yes. When I have the mid-point opacity at zero, there is no “stroke.” When I crank it all the way up to 1.000, it only appears around the yellow areas, does not appear around the green areas, and stops right when the gradient in the arrows starts to change to red.
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Ah sorry that didn’t help. For me increasing the end opacity got the stroke to complete, but I only roughly recreated your shape to try it on. As for the soft edges, maybe use curves and set it to the alpha channel to boost it up. You might have to precomp again again before it’ll change the alpha right. Good luck
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