Gearing Up : Rotate a Mask not Object Inside the Mask!
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Damon Ledet, Adobe certified After Effects Instructor, had a client that wanted to make a little gear in AE. He wanted the mask to rotate but not the colors in the gear. He set up a little tutorial project to do it.
Note: You can create a gear mask with Profound Effects Useful Things, a very useful After Effects Plug-in
Instructions
- I created a little gear path in Photoshop (Photoshop gear path)
- In After Effects create yourself a comp (600 X 600 size of Photoshop doc with gear shape, 1 frame, named color for gear)
- Next export this comp as a single frame Composition›Save Frame›File (opt-command- s or alt-ctrl-s) Import that image back in. The reasoning behind this is the noise filter generates random noise every frame I do not however want the noise to animate.
- Create a new comp (600 X 600, 03:00, named gear rotate)
- Insert your Color for gear.psd (the frame we export out and imported in step 4) .
- Create a new white solid named gear make it comp size and make it layer 2.
- Create a solid make it comp size. Add the effect Render›Ramp I adjusted the gradient direction. Add the effect Stylize›Noise I set amount of noise to 100%. Add the effect Blur & Sharpen›Directional Blur I set Direction to 90 degrees and I set blur Length to 60. This will be the brushed metal look for the inside of our gear.
- Copy your path from the Photoshop doc and paste it on your gear solid it will now become a mask on the gear solid. You can turn off the video for layer 1 (color for gear.jpg) to see the mask but be sure to turn the video back on after.
- Click down at the bottom of your timeline on the words Switches/Modes so that you are in the Modes palette. Click that little box under the T for the first layer (color for gear.jpg). This will Preserve Transparency from the layer below (the layer with our gear shaped mask)
- Now you can rotate the gear layer and not the object inside the gear. ( I set a couple of rotation keyframes.
- Create a new comp (600 X 600, 03:00, named Final Gear)
- I changed the Composition background color to white (Composition›Background color, Shift+Command+B, or Shift+Ctrl+B)
- Insert your Gear Rotate comp into your Final Comp
- Add Effect›Perspective›Bevel Alpha (I set Edge Thickness to 8) Add Effect›Perspective›Drop Shadow (I set Opacity to 60%, Distance to 9, Softness to 10)
Damon Ledet Damon@Ledet.com
AE Instructor www.damonledet.com