After Effects CS6 Tutorial - 55 - Free Transform Mask Video Lecture | Adobe After Effects CS6: Complete Course from Novice to Pro - IT & Software

another way to help animate easily when
like your your footage is moving around
is to use the freeform tool so you W
click on the mask path here so
everything selected and you hold ctrl or
command on the Mac and press T it'll
make this bounding box here now if I
move a few frames out like that I mean
my bounding box went away so let me
click on it again
hold ctrl T bring it back up now I can
drag all the points here and then also I
can scale from these corners here makes
it a lot easier than trying to move
single points or a group of points you
can also if you move outside it you can
rotate it if you ever need it to now the
rotation point uses this anchor point
right here now if I want to move this
anchor point I just move with the
selection tool picked out I just move
right on top of it and then the little
like arrow icon for arrow icon I guess
is on it and then you can move the
anchor point maybe to here and then if I
try rotating it's going to rotate from
that point it's good for like if you're
trying to like rotate when someone moves
our elbow up and down are there their
forearm up and down and then you put the
anchor point at the elbow and then that
way you can rotate that from the elbow
just like it would be in like the real
thing
so hit control Z to bring it back to the
center
to deselect from the free transform all
you got to do is hit enter on your
keypad make sure that you're in the
layers panel when you hit enter now if
if you go ahead and select just like a
few few points you know select these
bottom points and then I hit ctrl T to
bring it up the the free transform
it'll only free transform those points
so I can just move the bottom part or if
I just want to move like a corner or
something like that
I mean rotating this way it doesn't
usually work too good but I mean you can
see how it might be helpful actually it
might have been pretty helpful on that
part so then press ENTER to get off the
free transform tool make sure I have my
selection tool there and I click off and
I'm off my points now one last thing I
wanted to show you about the free
transform tool here is a let me select
all the points
you know hit the didn't select those
ones hit hit ctrl T now if I rotate this
and then I go ahead and move to a
different section there and it's not my
freeform tool isn't there anymore
I go to select more points and do the
the tool again it's going to appear
straight up and down again it's not
rotated like it was so it's it's a based
it doesn't base where the bounding boxes
are based on when you rotate it it just
comes back to the original straight up
position so that's all I've got for you
today on using the free transform tool
and animating your mask and so how to
select your points so use those to your
advantage to speed up your workflow and
remember how to select the different
points and when you remember how to do
this stuff you're faster than someone
who has to go in and select each of the
points manually because I don't know how
to use the program right so look I'll
see you guys in the next tutorial which
I'll be talking about the different mass
properties down here like feather
opacity and expansion and things like
that well in the meantime you guys stay
frosty don't play too many video games
or if you want to you can it's up to you
I like to play video games so see you
guys later