Drawing multiple mask lines using pen tool on one solid layer but only 1 line is visible

Forum|Forum|9 years ago
January 24, 2017
1 reply
2254 views

Hello everyone,

I am working through a tutorial and I am supposed to draw several lines on one solid layer using the pen tool. I am drawing a blueprint graphic that has the line strokes on the letters in the graphic. In the tutorial example all the lines show up but on my screen I can only see 1. If I click on the dots that show where the other ones are by holding the shift key down I can then see all of the lines drawn. I cannot make them all show up at once without clicking and using the shift key. The problem is I end up moving all of them when they are showing if I try to adjust one line. Also, when I try to animate the opacity of the lines so they appear to draw nothing happens. I am using the latest version of AE but the tutorial is using a version from a few years ago. I'm sure its a simple setting somewhere but since I'm not an expert I am at a loss.

Thanks for any help!

This topic has been closed for replies.

R

Rick Gerard

Community Expert

Nothing has changed. You may have view masks turned off:

Other than that you should be able to see the paths you are drawing.

BTW, I'd probably use the pen tool and shape layers to create blueprint type graphics. You will find them much easier to animate. If you want to stick with a solid layer and stroke applied to a mask then make sure that your drawing is not fouled up by the mask settings.

The best way to learn about drawing masks and paths is to type mask or animating paths in the search help field at the top right corner of AE and check out the community resources.

One last point. Your tutorial may be junk, most of the ones you find using a Google search are created by folks that don't really have a good understanding of AE or how it works and many of them just plain teach bad techniques. It is very important to vet your trainers so you don't end up with bad information. Adobe does a pretty good job of doing that for you if you use the Search Help tool in AE.

K

KDawg2013Author

Participant

Rick,

Thank you for your quick response and your information.

I have tried toggling on an off the view mask. What’s happening is that I draw the first line and it shows up fine. I go to draw a 2nd line and it shows up but the first line I drew disappears and only the center dot (pardon my terminology)is left showing. As mentioned before, when I go to animate them (opacity to 0 -100% over a few frames) nothing happens. I have not changed any of the mask settings and am using the defaults.

The tutorial I’m following is by Andrew Kramer of Video Co-pilot. I have done several of his tutorials with success.

Could it be a graphics card problem? I’m using a 2014 MacBookPro with 16gb of ram and 2gb of video ram (the max I could get at the time).

Thank You,

Kevin Goebbel

Communications Specialist

Media Technologies

(personal data removed)

R

Rick Gerard

Community Expert

There should be nothing wrong with your machine. Send us a screenshot of your comp with the modified properties of the layer giving you problems revealed. Just select the layer, press the U key twice, then press Ctrl/Cmnd + 3 to take a screenshot of the entire screen and drag it to the reply field on this forum.

If you have no effects applied to a layer you should have no problem seeing all mask paths you draw.

I suspect workflow before bug. If you applied Effect>Generate>Stroke to the layer and then started to draw an additional mask you would only see the Stroke effect on one of the masks. In order to have Stroke applied to all of the paths you would have to select All Masks in the Effects Control Panel.

If you have multiple instances of Stroke on a layer the first would have the paint style set to On Transparent and the rest would have the paint style set to On Original. If you want the stroke to appear on the original layer then all copies of stroke would be set to On Original (the default) but you also need to have all of the mask paths set to None.

See this example. All paths are visible because the layer is selected. You can see 3 masks all set to the Add mode. The Path set to Mask 3, Brush Size of the first stroke changed to 10 and the paint style set to On Transparent on the first copy of stroke. The Color set to green, the Brush size set to 10 on Stroke 2. All other properties are at their default values.

This shows how valuable pressing the U key twice can be in diagnosing problems with a layer. I hope this helps.

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