[John Cuevas]

Unless I’m missing something you should just use the vector shapes alpha as a matte for your text. To do this you would just need to place your shape above the text layer, and in the column “TrkMat” change the text’s matte to Alpha Matte.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

Yeah, but your explanations actually read like they were written by someone who doesn’t treat English as a second language(despite the best efforts of my teachers)

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

A track matte uses either the alpha information of the layer above it or the luma information to determine what is seen. Create a new comp, and drop a picture into it. Now create a solid(Cntl+Y) and mask it. In the “TrkMat” column change the pulldown from “None” to “Alpha Matte”. Your bottom solid now is using the alpha channel of the layer above it to control where it’s visible. Move the solid around and it will reveal different parts of your photo.

Precomping is when you create a composition and it’s placed into another composition. If you make changes in the precomp, they ripple forward into the main comp.

Take a look at this project I created the other day: https://f1.creativecow.net/5549/luma-matte

I took a shot of the moon, duplicated, added some effects and then dropped that into a final composition use just the brightness(Luma Matte) of it to determine what parts of the map would show through.

If you are just starting, check out this link: Getting started with After Effects (CS4, CS5, CS5.5, & CS6)

If you try to learn this program by just jumping in, it will end up just frustrating you.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

Precomp the two layers together and mask the precomp.

Another method would be to mask a solid above the two layers and then change the transfer mode of that solid to Stencil Alpha. This method affects everything below the solid, so it wouldn’t work if you only wanted to affect 2 layers in a 20 layer comp.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

Are you scaling multiple layers? When you do that they scale down on there own anchor point. One method to scale proportionally is to create a null layer, parent everything to the null and scale the null.

ETA: And Ted beat me to it.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

if I can help out, I will.

johnnycuevas@netscape.net

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

Trim Paths…I knew there had to be a way to do that better then a track matte, good to know.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

Glad I could help.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

And I’m sold!

That was pretty cool, Ted, nice work.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

You could probably accomplish this in many ways, the easiest being if it’s just a simple shape, use the pen tool to create a shape layer that follows the curve path. Then open up the shape layer > Stroke 1 > Dashes and press the “+” to enable dashes.

Highlight Click the “Path” and copy it. Now create a comp size solid and add a mask point. Now click the “Mask Path” and paste the path from your shape in there. Finally add & animate a stroke effect and use it as a track matte for your dashes.

There might be a better way to animate the dashes from within the shape layer, but I don’t use shapes enough to know exactly how to reveal along the paths. Maybe someone else does. Another method you could use, if you have really good video steady video is to use the tracker to track the motion of the pencil head, and copy those position frames to a path, and create your dashes that way. The reveal step would be the same.

Here’s a quick example project that I hope points you in the right direction. 5553_revealdashes.aep.zip

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.