Learn to Mask in Adobe After Effects CC

Learn to Mask in Adobe After Effects CC

AFTER EFFECTS TUTORIAL ALL ABOUT MASKING! | Learn how to create and animate simple masks in After Effects today in this tutorial!

In this After Effects tutorial, we’ll learn about creating simple masks using the shape tools and the Pen tool, how the masks work and the different ways you can blend them to build complex masks and even how to animate and perform a very simple rotoscope to animate a mask. This is the tutorial for you if you know nothing about masking in After Effects. Thanks for watching!

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Tutorial Recording Notes:

Disclaimer: these are the actual notes I used to record this video and are written in a language you may or may not understand. Hopefully, you find them useful or cool.

  1. If you have a layer selected and you draw with the shape tools, you mask that layer
  2. TIP: Double-click the mask to bring up transform handles to make moves or edits to that mask instead of the actual contents of that After Effects layer (Pan-Behind Tool also can be used to move footage or layer content “under” the mask)
  3. Hotkeys while creating the shape that will be the mask (proportions, dragging before you finish dragging it out, etc…)
  4. Also you can use the Pen Tool to create a very customized mask shape
  5. Duplicate a circular mask and size that second mask down into the middle and change from “Add” to “Subtract” to create a donut shaped mask. NOTE: You can also invert the mask effect by checking that on, this would reveal all EXCEPT a donut shaped section in the middle of our video
  6. Animate a mask wipe using keyframes on that mask within our layer
  7. Animate the points on a Pen drawn mask to do a drive-by transition.

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