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Simple question about masking
Hi, I’m just starting to work with masking in AE. I’m sure there’s a simple – if not intuitive – solution to this problem.
I want to move a layer behind its mask, without the mask itself moving. In other words, I want the mask, set to “add,” to stay stationary, while the content it’s masking moves behind it.
For whatever it’s worth, it’s for an animated scene in which tiny waves move across a lake. There’s a large sheet of waves, and obviously the mask is applied over the lake so that the waves don’t move over the shore.
Any suggestions?
Thanks very much, I really appreciate all the help that’s been offered to me on this forum.
Paxson.
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4 Replies
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How about applying a mask on the shore layer instead?
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Can a mask applied to the shore layer somehow affect only the wave layer?
To clarify, I have one layer with the shore and the base color of the lake, and another with little waves. I want to move the waves across the lake.
Any thoughts?
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hey paxson,
what chris was proposing was split the shore and the lake base color onto two separate layers with the mask on the shore layer (set to subtract). then sandwich the waves in between. since the mask and the waves would then be separate, you’d be free to animate the wave layer any way you wanted, without affecting the mask.
the other way is to separate your mask from your wave layer and then set the waves to use the masked layer as a track matte (alpha matte). you can probably just duplicate the waves layer, then set the lower waves layer to use the upper one as a track matte and remove the mask on the lower layer.
if you have transparency of some sort in the duplicate waves layer (which is now the track matte for the lower waves), you can use the fill effect to make it solid by setting it’s fill mask property to use the mask (the default uses the layers alpha).
Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
Thanks for the help, again, Kevin. I figured it out, using the “move layer behind mask” tool. I only needed the waves to move on top of a background lake layer, so all it took was masking out the lake and then moving the masked waves over the lake. I knew it was an easy fix…
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