Changing Pen size for masking larger letters

[Michael Duff]

not exactly sure what you mean … if you want a mask line to actually have thickness you need to apply a stroke to it .. look under Effects->Generate->stroke.

or do you mean the vector paint tool?

[Jerry Black]

Thanks for replying.

It’s not the stroke but the mask the stoke is set to cover. The width of the pen tool is too narrow to create a mask over the width of the line/character or letter so when a stroke is applied, it only covers the width of the pen which did not fully mask the item.

I felt that if I could change the width of the pen tool it would be possible for me to fully cover the width of the letters I wish to mask. For smaller type face, for example, it would not be necessary to fully outline each character which in some cases is very difficult to achieve. Like the paint brush tool, if there was some way to adjust being used to “brush-on” or applying the mask.

Please let me know if you understand what I trying to convey and if there is a way to do what I have described.

Thanks!!

[Darby Edelen]

It’s not clear what you’re trying to do. Firstly, the pen tool in After Effects is used to draw masks. The pen tool doesn’t have a width at all it only defines a line that defines the border of the mask. Some effects in AE can use masks for the purposes of generating pixels (instead of masking) and it is in these effects that you will adjust the ‘width’ of what is drawn on the mask.

If you really just want to mask your text you need to create your mask at the edges of the text (the pen/mask tool defines edges of an area). If your text was created in AE this is easy to do: right click the layer with the text tool selected and select ‘create outlines’ from the contextual menu.

Otherwise you can try using Layer > Auto-Trace to automatically create a mask based on the Luma/Alpha/RGB channels of the image.

Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA

[Jerry Black]

Thanks Darby, I will try the edge feature you mentioned. The masking is primarily for texts in which I am attemptin to create write-on or paint effects but simply capturing the exact dimensions of each letter can get a bit tricky and difficult to manage. The edge setting you mention could simply this effort.

Thanks!!

[Darby Edelen]

[jkb242] “Thanks Darby, I will try the edge feature you mentioned. The masking is primarily for texts in which I am attemptin to create write-on or paint effects but simply capturing the exact dimensions of each letter can get a bit tricky and difficult to manage. The edge setting you mention could simply this effort.”

I think you’re misunderstanding me. There is no ‘edge setting,’ the pen is a tool that defines with boundaries/edges of masks/areas and that’s all it does.

Look at the AE help file for more information (F1).

Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA