After Effects CS6 Tutorial - 62 - Creating a Growing Line Video Lecture | Adobe After Effects CS6: Complete Course from Novice to Pro - IT & Software

hello everybody welcome to another After
Effects cs6 tutorial my name is buddy
Blackford and today I'm going to show
you how to use mask paths so we're going
to create things like this where it
reveals a line and the line grows along
your mask path so if I look here I just
made a path and then the line just grows
along it which is awesome and I'll show
you how to do that so the way we're
going to start is I'm just going to
delete what I had and I'm going to go
lair I click on my layers panel I always
do that layer new solid and we're just
going to create any any color you want
and this is going to be just going to
name it I named it reveal now come up to
your pen tool and it makes your on your
layer here this is going to create a
shape and just draw what you want here
enter by extending onto that switch to
your selection tool to get off of the
pen tool and now we have a motion path
now it's not closed so it's not a mask
it's a path so if we go into mask path
there you can this is what it is
so let's start animating the line to go
along it what you're going to do is
you're going to want to add an effect
called a stroke and that is if you type
it in here it comes down here under
generate or you can go to layer I mean
effect generate stroke and it creates
for you now you want to make sure it's
on the path of mask 1 whatever mask you
want to create the stroke on now if you
if you have this up if you want to keep
the background on then you keep it on
original image and you can change the
color here so now we have a red you can
change the brush size to make it fatter
that
in the hardness is how crisp your brush
is so I'll just show you real quick
more hard is a more hard brush is like
more crisp edges I guess and then a less
hard brush is like more blurry edges
obviously you can animate the opacity
and then the start and end is how you
animate it moving so if you move the
start here it's going to move like so
from the starting point now if you move
from the end it's going to move from the
end point so usually you want to use the
end point because that's how you really
drew it so hits so keyframe the end
point then you can move ahead like three
spaces or three three seconds I mean set
it back to 100 now we do a rein preview
you can see a draws on your background
now what if you don't want the
background like this you can come down
to transparent and now it's on your
original background you can also put on
reveal original image and it will use
your solid color or whatever image was
behind
now sometimes you will encounter where
the edge of the brush kind of like or
the edge of your stroke kind of like
cuts off if you use a big brush size so
I'll show you guys that real quick
delete that and create a new layer okay
and I'm going to make this layer a
little smaller there we go
I'm just going to make a pen tool on it
again
up
honestly I'm getting close to the edge
switch to my selection tool and let's
add the the effect on there
now if we increase the brush size
I didn't get close enough there we go
you can see that it's getting cut off
down here down there that's because your
brush size can't go beyond the
boundaries of whatever you make your
path on so there's a way to get around
that a little bit so you want to use
grow bounds you just type in grow bounds
it'll come up it's under effect always
do that effect utility roll bounds now
if we increase this put it at the top
now with the Royal bounds on there it's
not going to work when you have the
paint style as reveal original image so
we're going to have to use on
transparent or on original image so if I
set this back down to zero work there is
nothing and then you can see it's there
cut off if I move it up it'll increase
the boundary edges so you can also see
that on original image that it goes past
which is a nice in case you get some
clipping there so that's pretty that's
how you use that effect and the mask
path so that's a very handy looking cool
neat looking tool use it when you're
creating some cool-looking motion
graphics and I'll see you guys in the
next tutorial we'll be talking a little
bit more about masks