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CS5, How do I create an ellipse-shaped composition, with transparency outside the ellipse?
My composition is a banner for a website, 570×82, several text layers, with glows and such, to more easily get a brighter and modulating look. I generated a Radio Waves stroke effect on text layer 6. No problem here—everything runs fine, but for some reason I can’t scale the stroke effect. It extends to the comp borders, which is too much. There are no parameters to scale the stroke per se, and scaling the layer doesn’t do a thing.
Someone suggested pre-composing, I’ll try that if necessary but first I added another Solid layer: I’m trying to use Generate Ellipse to create a mask or screen to constrain the composition to that overall shape, and thus constrain the overweening stroke effect. But I’m having trouble deleting or screening what’s outside the ellipse. This kind of thing is easy in Photoshop, just invert the selection and delete, but how do I “delete” what’s outside the ellipse in AE, so it’s transparent, and my composition has an elliptical nature and look? Hoping someone has some notions—
Houston TX
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3 Replies
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using a second layer above the radio waves layer as a track matte should do it.
make a new comp-sized solid and then add an oval mask.
place the new solid above the radio waves solid.
in the timeline, from the track matte (TrkMat) dropdown menu for the radio waves layer select ‘alpha matte’ and it should clip the radio waves to the alpha of the oval layer.
if you don’t see the trkmat drop down, right-click near the top of the timeline (where is says ‘source name’) and choose columns>modes).
Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
Hi,
my solution without precomposing:
1. add an adjustment layer in your current composition and put it on top of your layer stack
2. add a mask in that layer, (in your case an ellipse)
3. add the effect > extract
4. in the extract effect settings > check the ‘invert’ optionthis is a useful solution when you want to mask out a certain region in your comp, without precomposing (so all your layer relations stay intact)
happy masking!
Wim
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Mr. Wim— thank you so much, I got depressed about ever finding a solution that didn’t involve an expensive tutor. Finally got into deadline situation and had to give it another go— you nailed it! Thanks!
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