The text is still there, it hasn’t moved at all, the mask just hides parts of it as it moves around. Here is what happens if we drag the mask off the text to illustrate how this works. Inverted works in reverse, everything is visible but what is inside the mask. It is important to note that unless the ‘inverted’ box is ticked next to the mask component of the timeline, the mask hides everything but what is contained within the mask itself. There are many instances you will want to do this, but for this project we are looking at masking specifically, and so we ensure our text layer ‘Mask’ is highlighted, select the rectangle shape tool, and draw a mask around the text, which results in what we see in this screenshot. Using the shape tool will create a mask ONLY if the layer you wish to mask is selected in the timeline, if nothing is selected, the tool will create a shape layer. You can also cycle through the shapes by using the Q shortcut. It is important to understand how the shape tool works for effective masking, the tool is dual purpose and as such it is important to follow the correct steps to get the effect you want.įirst off, the tool itself is on the top menu, or shortcut ‘Q’, the drop down menu allows you to choose from a variety of shapes as we can see here. This is purely to illustrate the technique, you can use a mask on any type of layer you wish in your projects, as we will discuss later on. To get started we first create a new composition, I created a small 320x240 resolution composition for this purpose, and added a text layer that simply contains a single word ‘mask’ in yellow.
ADOBE AFTER EFFECTS CS6 MASKING TUTORIAL HOW TO
If you accidentally closed a tool panel and you want to get it back, you can simply re-enable it from the Window menu.In the following part, we will show you how to mask in After Effects. These can be configured and generally, you can drag any tool panel around and dock it wherever you like to fully customize your After Effects interface. On the right side of the window you will find a number of tool panels.
ADOBE AFTER EFFECTS CS6 MASKING TUTORIAL UPDATE
As you play back your or scrub through your composition, the preview window will update automatically. The preview window in the middle of the screen will show you what your composition looks like at the current time position.
The vertical red line in your timeline window is the current time indicator and you can grab and drag the little triangle head to scrub through your composition. This bar indicates when the layer starts and ends and you can move them around or adjust their start or end time at will :)
On the right side you will see the life bar for each layer. On the left side you can see all the layers in your composition and this is where you can manage their order and properties. The timeline displays the contents of the current composition you are working on. You can create folders here and I do recommend that you keep your files properly organized as it can get pretty messy pretty fast, especially when you work on more complicated VFX. The project window will show you a list of all the files you imported into your project as well as any compositions you created.
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