how to make a stroke around a masked object in after effects

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. In the following part, we will show you how to mask in After Effects. Add a live preview and the ability to set the starting and ending of the stroke (so the stroke on that I could be tweaked to start at the upper left corner instead of the center of the top edge) and Photoshop would have a most amazing time saving, extremely useful, all purpose Stroke tool.Creating and using masks is a fundamental aspect of getting the best from After Effects, here we will look at the process for creating masks from the shape menu, which is the most straightforward way to implement a mask. So for applying an embroidery stitch effect around an O you'd leave it at 100% but for san-serif, block letter I you'd perhaps have it at 50% or less so the stroke would just go down one side.

when the 'one edge' option is selected, it should have a sub-selection to control how far around the stroke goes. What could be better? If the selection has two closed but not connected edges (for example a letter O or a ring shaped raster selection), have a way to select only one edge to apply the stroke to. In other words, anything you can have as a selection or editable object should be able to have any sort of stroke effect applied. What would really be nice is to merge all the stroking functions into a single stroke panel that can apply solid or brush strokes, centered, inside, outside, inside or outside offset to produce a gap between the stroke and the object being stroked, with sharp or round corners, and be able to do ALL the functions on a raster selection, a shape, a path, editable text etc.

How to make a stroke around a masked object in after effects