Moooving MASKS! so annoying!

[Kevin Camp]

track matte, perhaps… place you ‘matte’ layer above the ‘fill’ layer. then select your fill layer and choose the above layer alpha as a track matte from the ‘modes’ for that layer.

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Darby Edelen]

Use a Track Matte, check the AE Help (F1) if you don’t know what that is =)

Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA

[Jeff Mcbride]

You can move a mask as you can anything else with that mask shape property. Draw your mask with the pen tool using curves. Set the Mask Shape stopwatch and move down the timeline. Click the layer (not the mask) and the mask points should turn from squares to circles. These are editable and have the bezier curves attached to them. You can add vertices, remove vertices, and of course move them, scale them etc.

[Charlie Hughes]

That’s not the question. That’s simply the mask shape, you go try making a bubble float by with just “mask shape” keyframed. With “position” on other layers you can, for instance, have an object move on a curved path. You can bend it’s position keyframes to make a smooth arcing motion. What you just explained does not achieve this with masks. Try it.

[Simon Roughan]

I know how to achieve this. But Im not telling you because youve got no manners. But heres a hint, its not done with a mask.
Good luck…

[Jeff Mcbride]

Haha. I’m going to agree. It’s best to be nice, especially when you’re new to the forum.

[Charlie Hughes]

Jeeez. I didn’t even think I sounded that harsh! You guys sure stick together. Alright, I apologize to the guy that was trying to help. Clearly, now that I think about it, he didn’t read my question in the first place. There’s no way he would have given that answer if he even read the first paragraph, since I directly addressed that, which was why i was surprised. I’ve figured out how to deal with this problem, thanks. Sorry if I hurt any feelings on here, I’m officially feeling bad about my behavior and promise to be nice in the future. Also, I wrote “i will not be mean to people on creativecow” 100 times on my chalk board.

Sincerely,
Guy that was Mean to the Guy that didn’t read the question.

[Bart Straman]

i want is to be able to move a mask as I would anything else. I want a round bubble shaped mask to float over a layer, breaking through ONE layer

ehm, sorry if I too don’t understand you. but if you do the follow:
keyframe your mask shape at the beginning were you want. let say your round mask is in the left top corner. now go to the end of your comp and simply position it to for example the right under corner.
now the mask will folow that path…. not that hard right??

you can also do a trackmate if you have a something to track..

look at for example (one of many’s) http://www.videocopilot.net tutorial and then the demon face one.

and remember, don’t sit to long behind your pc screen, working on something, bacause it isn’t good for your temper 😉

Bart

[Darby Edelen]

[Ultimate Bart] “you can also do a trackmate if you have a something to track..”

You don’t need something to track to use a track matte (;

[Ultimate Bart] “keyframe your mask shape at the beginning were you want. let say your round mask is in the left top corner. now go to the end of your comp and simply position it to for example the right under corner.”

Uh-oh, this is where he got upset about people not reading his post =O You can’t set spatial interpolation or other nice positional properties for the Mask Shape property, meaning that, in your example, the mask would move in a straight line… Not very floating bubble-like. There’s no way to animate the Mask Shape into smooth curves without keyframing every frame… and why do that to yourself? (;

Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA

[Bart Straman]

the mask would move in a straight line… Not very floating bubble-like

Ah, i see your point. hmm, tricky question then, without frame by frame work.