[Andy Kiernan]

there are maybe a few ways to approach it. Maybe simply use a gradient texture with knots in the right place and flat projection to colour each letter individually (sort of). may not work with animation though…

Or add a correction deformer, in poly mode make a selection tag for each letter then bin the deformer and use the tags for a separate material per letter.

There’s a shader called multi shader or mograph shader or something that you can add to a layer shader to use the index of an object to change colours too, works on mograph objects.

[Andy Kiernan]

maybe do one layer style on layer, then precomp and put a layer style on precomp too? But no I don’t think you can have more than one on a layer

[Andy Kiernan]

If I understand correctly you maybe can just ‘add’ the text layers together (concatenate?)

So if you had three ‘edit’ text layers, you use their source texts in an expression and add them together with some spaces….

thisComp.layer(“one”).text.sourceText + (” “) + thisComp.layer(“two”).text.sourceText + (” “) + thisComp.layer(“three”).text.sourceText

Then you have three input layers, One, Two and Three, and one output which reads One Two Three (in this case)

[Andy Kiernan]

yer i noticed this. shame. Cant seem to find a way to ‘get active point selection’ in python either, oh dear.

[Andy Kiernan]

yer I want to know this too, at the moment I just go to structure manager and double click the index number, that seems to be the fastest way I can find.

May have to brush the dust off my python learning, which I definitely kept up 😭, and make a forward/backward script….somehow!

[Andy Kiernan]

you can feather the mask which amounts to the same thing. You can press ‘f’ on the layer with the mask to expose the feather property, or, use the feather tool (press and hold mask pen tool button to show other tools, one of which is feather tool) you can then choose the area of the mask edge to be feathered.

[Andy Kiernan]

I’m not sure about that workflow, but to achieve this kind of thing, look into the projection man workflow. You use a flat or camera projection, model out the buildings and then you can generate UV coordinates from that.

[Andy Kiernan]

yes sure. Track mattes are very useful, in their basic forms you use a black or white image to tell the layer below if it’s transparent or not. In your case, to remove the section from outside/ through the door, I would use mochaAE/ basic masks on a white solid layer (turn the layer off, then mask relevant parts with as many masks as needed)… this will leave you with a white shape that fits in the gap where you want your new background. So, place the masked sold layer above the background and use the luma matte option (to the right of the transfer modes), This tells the BG to only display where the layer above is white.

Hopefully that makes sense!

[Andy Kiernan]

Rather than change opacity, I would just move the mask out of frame, then if it needs to come back in later, keyframe and then move back into place. Not sure what the subtract mode is all about, maybe better to precomp roto’d layer and then duplicate and use as a track matte on your stock still?

[Andy Kiernan]

if you have a layer roto’d, so , for example, you have a man roto’d out, you can then use that as a track matte, alpha matte as is, or use a fill to make the roto’d layer white and use luma matte.

If you’re needing the actual mask data, to maybe add a stroke or something, I cant think of a simple way to do that.