Creating straight shapes with masking tool

[Ellen Maurer]

I am using SV 11.

[Doug Jackson]

I find the mask tool one of the more confusing things to work with in Vegas.
But the key to what you are trying to accomplish is to remember “Clicking a mask handle will toggle it from a Bezier curve to a straight line.”

This applies to the ‘Anchor Creation Tool’ (the Fountain pen) and the ‘Split Tangent Tool’ (the Arrow pointing up to the left).

To create a mask with straight lines, click on the Anchor Creation tool, then click and release in the scene. Move the cursor to where you want the next point to be and click and release the mouse — a straight line appears. Continue until you have the polygon you want and the click the original starting point to close the mask.

Mouse over any of the handles and click to toggle to Bezier curve if needed.

What about moving handles then? Hold the Ctrl key down and then click and drag the handle.

Regards,
–Doug

Dell Precision T5500
2x Intel Xeon DP E5620 @ 2400MHz; Memory: 22528MB; Chipset:Intel 5520;
Video Card : NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti
HDD: Crucial_SSD1 (256GB);WD(1000GB);WD(2000GB)
OS: Windows 7 Pro SP1 (64-bit)

[Ellen Maurer]

Thank you for the information.
I want to “draw” a rectangle.

[John Rofrano]

If by “straight” lines you mean perfectly horizontal and vertical, then hold the Shift key down before making any clicks after the first one. You also probably want to turn Grid Snapping on if you are drawing a rectangle. Even if it doesn’t snap to the grid when you draw it, you can always move the corners with grid snapping on and it will snap the corners to the gird which guarantees a perfect alignment.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com

[Ellen Maurer]

I tried as explained and couldn’t draw a rectangle just by clicking.
Thank you! So sad SV11 doesn’t have shape tools as in SV12 and above.

[Doug Jackson]

My copy of Vegas 11 is no longer installed, but I did open Vegas 10 and I do see that features in the mask tool have evolved and changed in later releases (including the ability to add a square/rectangle and circle/oval presets in later versions).

I can confirm that in Vegas 10, at least, it is quite difficult to create a rectangular mask.

Dell Precision T5500
2x Intel Xeon DP E5620 @ 2400MHz; Memory: 22528MB; Chipset:Intel 5520;
Video Card : NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti
HDD: Crucial_SSD1 (256GB);WD(1000GB);WD(2000GB)
OS: Windows 7 Pro SP1 (64-bit)

[John Rofrano]

[Ellen Maurer] “I tried as explained and couldn’t draw a rectangle just by clicking.”

How about dragging the corners with Grid Snapping on? That should work pretty easily.

~jr

http://www.johnrofrano.com
http://www.vasst.com