complex masking question

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yojimbo
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complex masking question

Post by yojimbo »

hi i've had a look through the tutorials ans verns masking tutorial too and i'm trying to create a mask that does the following but i'm not sure if it is possible any tips?

OK i have a circle that is a mask with some with some random shapes in it that move around, passing 'through' the mask to contrain their appearance to the circle.

What i also have is a smaller circle outside the mask - i want this circle to pass over the original and mask out the mask as it passes i.e. looks as though there is a hole passing over the original circle, hiding the shapes within and allowing a view of the back ground - is this possible, i've tried subtract from mask and everything but to no avail?
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slowtiger
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Post by slowtiger »

Don't forget that nearly anything can act as mask - a single layer, several layers together, the alpha information of an image, or a group or bone layer!

You can combine any of these to get the desired effect. I did a small test, see this file with QT and anme file: http://www.slowtiger.de/examples/masktest.zip. What I did was to place the two circles into one grup (the "inner" mask) and set the masking so the small circle does cut out a hole from the big one. This group as a whole was put into another group and acted as mask for the stripes.
yojimbo
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Post by yojimbo »

thanks slowtiger that's exactly what i was looking for - just missed the trick with nesting the masks within a mask. more complex than it first looked.
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toonertime
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Post by toonertime »

thanks for posting mr tiger

as a novice this is good stuff to analyze!
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slowtiger
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Post by slowtiger »

Forgot to mention something: if you nest masks like this, the project window will almost certainly not show you what it's going to look like. You need to render before you can control the result.
yojimbo
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Post by yojimbo »

slowtiger wrote:Forgot to mention something: if you nest masks like this, the project window will almost certainly not show you what it's going to look like. You need to render before you can control the result.
What i have done is just turned the top layer to reveal all so i can see whats going on when working on the piece then turning it back to hide all before rendering - thanks again.
rogermate
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Post by rogermate »

slowtiger wrote: if you nest masks
Is there a limit to the nesting? Such as only one Hide All and One Show all group, unless you start over with a clear mask layer.

Another idea is that when it suits your scene building, to create a mask layer, or masked scene element, in a separate .anme file, and then composite them together in your video editing software.
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slowtiger
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Post by slowtiger »

Is there a limit to the nesting?
Haven't tested for that. I don't think there is any, since I never had any difficulties even in my most complicated scenes.
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dueyftw
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Post by dueyftw »

Is there a limit to the nesting?
There might be, if there is, it would most likely be a byte, or 255 times.

Dale
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