-
Unable to adjust scale of layer without distorting masks
I have a large Comp that I nest inside a smaller Comp so I can pan and zoom in this Comp. In the large Comp, I have numerous masks cutting through a solid-color layer.
I now require the solid to be wider. When I scale in ‘X’ it stretches the existing masks. I tried creating a solid to the desired size and Copy/Pasted the masks, but it doesn’t do what I require it to.
In a nutshell: I need to have the solid-color layer larger, but without disturbing the masks.
Oh, I also tried creating another solid and butting it up flush with the existing layer, but that doesn’t work. When it looks good in the large Comp at 100%, it looks good in the smaller Comp until I zoom in.
This would seem ridiculously easy, so perhaps I’m over-looking a simple, effective solution.
Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance.
The other Steve
-
4 Replies
-
Try this,
1. Create a solid thats as big as you want and name it big solid
2. select the “small” layer in need of enlarging
3. open the solids folder in the project window
4. drag big solid out and “alt” drop it on top of the “small solid”
5. It should replace all the attributes and the masks should stay put.Let me know if this works for your situation, since i don’t know the specifics.
Andrew
-
Thanks for your response Andrew. I was a little fuzzy on #3 “open the solids folder in the project window” so I tried it two ways. I created a “solid” via Illustrator, imported that and tried to Alt drop, also created a new Comp with the large solid and Alt dropped but still get the masks stretching. As Dave LaRonde pointed out the mask vertices are tied to layer size.
I’ve learned my lesson: When you play with masks you can get burned:-)Zog learn lesson. Fire hot. Zog not touch fire again.
Thanks again but I think I’ve got an unweildy beast on this one. If I hadn’t spent many, make that MANY, hours on painstakingly creating 22 masks I’d simply start from scratch and chalk it up to experience.
Oh well. “Once burned, twice learned.”
-
Thanks Dave. You said it: “it’s a good lesson learned: you don’t want to make precomps too small. I doubt that you ever will again.” As a matter of fact I think I’ll get that tatooed to my forehead backwards so I can read it everytime I look in a mirror:-)
I tried your suggestion, but I still seem to have a problem with precisely lining up the edges ( in this case of the mask). To further explain: What is creating some difficulty is that the solid is only at 60% opacity so any misregistration is obvious. I’ve tried applying blurs, but without any success.
As I mentioned to Andrew, if I hadn’t spent so much time creating the masks to match up with the movement of other objects I’d simply start from scratch. Again as you suggest: “don’t make your precomps too small”. The ironic thing is I could have made the solid layer absolutely huge without any appreciable performance hit in computer processing. Lesson learned. Thanks again for responding.
-
Dave, I have to admit I was excited at this suggestion. I tried it and the separate layers are still referenced and , therefore, show the line where they butt up against one another. First, as you suggested, I brought the opacity of the 2 layers up to 100%. Then I put them in a PreComp which was brought in to the main Comp. Actually I overlapped the layers to ensure the line wouldn’t show, and expected the behaviour of this preComp to be solely affected as a unit. But when I decreased the opacity I could see the overlapping.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!Thanks for the solid advice. I thought for sure this would do the trick.
The other Steve.
“I’m not afraid of dying, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” Woody Allen (I think)
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up