animating a mask

[Steve Bentley]

You might have to double click the mask in the viewport to get it out of scale mode so you can access each point. Does it have the classic scaling dots at the 4 corners and compass points?
Is it locked by chance (hitting L by accident will do that )
Have you set an initial key frame on the path attribute? If you don’t, every change will be the new and forever shape of the mask.

[Jake Kranz]

Thanks for the quick response. Yes it does have the frame and dots around the entire canvas. i did double c;ick and it opened the layer in a separate tab. I tried rotoscoping the subject and the rest of the image was black (except the subject), I again tried to move the subject and the dots moved and the shape of the subject moved, but not the subject itself. You can tell i’m new at this but it’s very frustrating. Thanks again!
Jake

[Steve Bentley]

I think what’s happening is that you are missing the mask and double clicking the layer which takes you to the sub layer or precomp that each layer has (except solids).
When you hover over a mask that is in free form transform mode (the 8 corner and side dots) you have to hit the mask line exactly and wait until the cursor turns from the usual arrow into a stemmless arrow (kind of a chevron). Only then can you double click the mask to get to the individual points. You can also just click on the mask in your layer’s attributes (hit M to reveal it) and that should give you access to the individual points.

If you double click with just the straight cursor, you will go into the sub comp for that layer – you can still mask there but you have to turn off the render button at the bottom right of the comp window – that button shows what the layer will look like with whatever effect you are playing with – in your case a mask.
So it will black out the area you are trying to see while masking unless you turn this off. But you won’t get to see the layer in context with all your other layers. So you should always mask layers in your main comp.

[Jake Kranz]

Thank you all for your suggestions. If none works out for me , I’m ready to just use premiere and Photoshop to accomplish what I want to do. Thanks again!
Jake