? RE: 2 Layer Mask Animation

[Barry C]

I'm trying to composite a full moon from a still photo on the upper track over a treelined river on the lower track. I need to be able to animate the moon so it moves along the sky above the river. The problem I'm having is moving this masked moon. When I move it with either the layouter or mask tool, it moves outside the mask boundaries leaving only a black hole. As a workaround, I've matched the sky color and placed the moon still photo into a backround of that color and not used the mask tool at all but only used the layouter with a heavy feathering. This works OK and allows me to animate the moon in the sky but I'm just wondering if I'm missing something about the mask tool. Of course, using the mask tool, I'm selecting inside only at 100% opacity and 0 opacity outside the masked moon. If the moon wasn't needing movement, this would be just fine, just no good with movement.

So, am I missing something?

[Jerry]

Why not extract the moon from the still and create an alpha file. That way layouter can easily animate it .

[David Clarke]

Put the layouter after the mask tool in the list of effects or use the transform effect instead which would also be after the mask tool.

Have a look at this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rv9iVpj1k-I.

At about 7½ minutes I talk about masking a hut and then flying it in. Is that your problem?

[Barry C]

Put the layouter after the mask tool in the list of effects or use the transform effect instead which would also be after the mask tool.

Have a look at this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rv9iVpj1k-I.

At about 7½ minutes I talk about masking a hut and then flying it in. Is that your problem?

David, you're amazing, as always! Yep, that's exactly what I wanted to do. It worked perfectly!