How To Change Motion Blur Settings After Effects

After Furnishings tin can throw a lot of new information at you when y'all're first starting out. If you've never worked in move graphics earlier, information technology can be hard to grasp everything you need to know to get a project going.

One of the master tools you lot'll exist using in the plan is the mask tool. If you haven't used masks before, we're going to dive into what they are and how you can utilize them to your advantage for professional-looking projects.

What Is a Mask?

Masks in After Effects — Masks either cake or reveal elements of a layer.

Masks either cake or reveal sections of your layer, based on the shape of your mask. Sometimes you need to hide bits of your layer to go your desired look, and masks are the tool for the task. You tin can apply them for text reveals, cropping out certain parts of your frame, etc.

Dissimilar Shape Layers, which take their own layers, masks exist in the layer they are affecting.

How to Use Masks in After Furnishings

Masking in After Effects is a relatively simple procedure. There are two types of mask uses that you should exist aware of: reveal masking and ingather masking.

Using masks in After Effects — Reveal masking and crop masking are two primary uses of the tool.

Reveal masking is primarily for revealing text for a title sequence. It creates a box/shape within of which you can see the text, and if the text moves outside of it, the text becomes invisible. Paired with motion keyframes, you can use this to make text appear from a line or a box.

Crop masking in After Effects — Crop masking is more common than reveal masking.

Crop masking is probably the more common use. Y'all employ it to crop out certain sections of your frame to reveal things below. I've used this before to create different layers of a unmarried video clip then I could affect certain sections of that clip individually.

How to Mask in Subsequently Effects

To demonstrate the basics of masking in After Effects, we're going to look at this great video by @notiansans that shows you the two base ways you can use a mask.

Reveal Masking

Text masking — To begin creating a reveal mask, activate the rectangle tool.

To start a reveal mask, select the layer you would like to mask and and so click the rectangle tool (or printing Q). Create a mask around your text using the tool. A new mask layer will appear below your selected layer.

Masks are a bit tricky considering they move along with your layer when adjusting position keyframes, so create 2 keyframes with a start and terminate position where you desire your text to stop. Then, get into your mask settings, and adjust the mask path to stay stationary.

At present, y'all can add some move blur to your text equally it moves, or even create a line or secondary layer from which to reveal it.

Crop Masking

To begin crop masking, you'll most probable want to use the pen tool. Select it with (G) and begin selecting out the area yous want to stick around. Later completing a detailed mask, the mask will close upward and hide the other section of the clip.

If you selected the wrong surface area, y'all can always click the "capsize" box in your mask settings to switch it to the non-masked side. If the mask is a bit crude, yous can always feather it a scrap in the settings to soften the edges.

Freeze frame in After Effects — Past using masks and freeze frame, you tin can make people or objects disappear.

In this example, he used a mask to disappear behind a lamp. To make this effect happen, merely drag a clip into your timeline, and create a new freeze frame by going to Time > Freeze Frame. Mask out the lamp and the right side of the frame in the frozen layer, and now, when your subject moves past that mask, they will disappear.

Looking for more Later Effects tips and tricks? Check out these articles.