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S
Silakos
Participant
February 1, 2017
Answered

How to animate a portion of a frame in after effects

  • February 1, 2017
  • 2 replies
  • 1040 views

The problem is simple. I want to animate (specifically move) a specific portion of a frame to another section of the video.

In other words imagine a 10s video which consists of an image with a sky with clouds, and I want to take a cloud and put it in a different section of the sky. And because it just so happens the the sky's color is consistent I can fill the gap with the sky's color without making it look funny. In my case it's not a cloud but it's something equivalent.

I thought about cropping the cloud in the image in Photoshop put it on top of the original layer image in after effects and move it and mask-subtract the cloud from the original image and put a sky color behind to fill the gap. This is what I am going to do if the isn't another way.

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer David Arbor

    You're halfway there. Instead of going to Photoshop:

    1) Mask the cloud and set the Mask Mode to Subtract

    2) Duplicate the layer and switch the mask on the duplicated layer to Add

    3) Add a Solid layer below both video layers and match the color to the sky

    4) Animate the top layer, which should now just be your cloud.

    2 replies

    S
    SilakosAuthor
    Participant
    February 3, 2017

    I found the problem. The detail preserving upscale effect was upscaling the mask. I assumed that the mask was being uplied to the upscaled video but it was applied to the normal video and was being itself upscaled as well. Which means that it was going off the composition panel since the upscale was pretty big (from FHD to 4K). And that's why I couldn't see it

    D
    David ArborCorrect answer
    Inspiring
    February 1, 2017

    You're halfway there. Instead of going to Photoshop:

    1) Mask the cloud and set the Mask Mode to Subtract

    2) Duplicate the layer and switch the mask on the duplicated layer to Add

    3) Add a Solid layer below both video layers and match the color to the sky

    4) Animate the top layer, which should now just be your cloud.

      S
      SilakosAuthor
      Participant
      February 2, 2017

      Thx a lot. I did it the photoshop way but your way has far less steps. I had 2 problems applying it though.

      1. I cant find an equivelant to the magic wand tool in after effects and my selection with the pen can never be as accurate or as fast as that
      2. For some reason masks dont seem to work like they are supposed to. I've used masks in the past and the add, subtract options worked perfectly. But in this composition for some reason the add option gives me a blackscreen, (in my case sky screen because I have put a sky color layer behind) and the subtract option doesn't do anything, just if I hadn't put a mask at all or if my mask was infinitesimely small.

      D
      David Arbor
      Inspiring
      February 2, 2017

      1) The closest thing to the Magic Wand in After Effects is the Roto Brush, but that would be very inefficient.

      2) Do you have multiple masks on the same layer that could be conflicting? Can you post a screenshot of your timeline with all the properties exposed? Or better yet, would you be ok with running the Collect Files command from File>Dependencies>Collect Files and posting a zip of everything?

      You can also make your Magic Wand selection in Photoshop, right-click in the middle of the selected area, choose "Make Work Path" and then copy that path and paste it on your layer in After Effects. The mask might be pasted into the middle of your comp, so you'll have to double-click on it and reposition it, but it will work. You might also get some extra masks (from the Magic Wand selection) that you can delete.

      At this point, it might just be easier to do the work in Photoshop, create a separate layer for the cloud, and then import the entire PSD into After Effects. If you do this, make sure to choose the "Composition-Retain Layer Sizes" option instead of choosing "Footage." This will create a comp with all the Photoshop layers, and you'll start out with a dedicated cloud layer.

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