• Adobe After Effects

  3D Animated Masks

  Posted by Justin Folk on July 13, 2007 at 8:27 pm

  Looking for advice on a good work-flow for an effect I’m trying to create:

  I have two layers of the same shot (one desaturated, one saturated). I want to animate several masks in a 3D space and then paste them onto the top, desaturated layer to reveal the saturated layer underneath. I am going to create the moving, 3D masks by animating line art on a 3D layer (using the write-on effect) and then use the auto-trace
  function to create the moving masks. The problem I am running into is pasting the masks that were created in 3D space onto the 2D shot and still keep its properties. Can anyone suggest a way to do this?

  Any alternate suggestions would be appreciated too. Thanks!

  Antonio Pernicano replied 14 years, 9 months ago 3 Members · 4 Replies
• 4 Replies

• 

  Steve Roberts

  July 13, 2007 at 8:54 pm

  A mask only resides on a layer. So if you create a mask on a 3D layer, it is a part of that layer. If you copy and paste it to another layer, it will now be a part of the new layer. In other words, masks don’t have position in 3D space, layers do. A mask is nothing without the layer on which it resides.

  You should keep the masks on their respective 3D layers where you created them, then use those layers as mattes for the layer below.
• 

  Justin Folk

  July 13, 2007 at 9:13 pm

  Cool. So, here’s my next dumb question: Would I do this with the Track Matte function? As far as I know, the Track Matte only uses the layer directly above. Can I apply mattes from several layers onto the one layer?
• 

  Steve Roberts

  July 13, 2007 at 10:18 pm

  Yep. You have to nest those layers into a composition (consider “precomposing”) then use that comp as the track matte.
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  Antonio Pernicano

  July 26, 2011 at 6:59 am

  Hello Roberts,

  I don’t know if this is a masking question or not.
  I have footage that i want to animate particles on with trapcode particular. In the footage, i have a person pretending to hold a ball of energy/particles and one hand is sort of hiding the other hand. I want it so that the particles stay between the hands and are still able to wrap around the hands. If possible the fingers too. And also the hands move and i dont know what would be the best method to track it with because the footage was taken at night. Any thing will help.

  Thank you.

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