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Masking Problem
Hello,
I’m doing a cel animation project with After Effects. I have 2 groups of drawings. First layer has a character and the bottom layer has the background. I set the blending mode> multiply of the top layer so that 2 set of drawings could be visible. However, there are some overlaping parts that I tried to eliminate with masking. When I created a mask to do that, the outlines of the mask is visible since I chose Multiply, there are some color differences.
As you can see the screen shot, the top layer is the character pre-comp, the bottom layer is the background loop. How can see the both sets of drawings and still be able to mask the overlaping drawings properly?
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5 Replies
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Maybe I’m not understanding correctly this, but why are you using Multiply instead of creating an alpha for the drawings in PSD or masking out directly in AE?
Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist -
Hello Ted,
I have thousands of drawings and each has white background. So I am not sure if there is a way I can get rid of those white backgrounds to have an alpha.
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You can try Extract.
You can also try what I call an “Unmult sandwich.”
You may have seen Red Giant’s Unmult effect [link], which removes black. You can use it to remove white by putting and Invert effect before and after (Invert > Unmult > Invert). I will usually add a Levels effect after that and tweak the new alpha levels a bit.
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn] -
Hello Walter,
My drawings are colored with gouache so the papers are a little bit wrinkled with shadows, and I want to keep the texture&some color spots etc. Do you think the plugin you suggested would work?
Also, what do you mean by extract?
Thank you really much!
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I solved the problem with keying out brighter and duplicating the foreground and masking the duplicated foreground!
I hope it would help somebody.
Best
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