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Text Effect Help

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verta123

In adobe after effects I'm trying to have text appear from behind a persons hand. The character has his hand to his chin and then he moves it down. When he moves his hand down i want a word to appear there. I'm not quite sure how to pull this off. I keep thinking i need to do something involving masking but I'm not to sure. Can anyone help?
 
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Im a freak here, I use Cinelerra on Linux to edit my video.

HOWEVER I think you would have to set it up frame by frame. Make a mask of where the hand covers the word, place the word on top of the base video and then put the area of where the hand blocks the text over the text for the duration of the blocking.
 
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this is classic rotoscoping, and is a tedious pain in the but for LONG takes, but a few seconds of screen time, its doable.

First, make sure your DONE editing. You don't want to waste an evening rotoscoping a shot only to NOT use it in the film! (been there, done that!)

With text and motion, its pretty likely you can get away with a rectangle mask and feathering rather then have to perfectly mask the hand.. (the hand is moving presumable pretty fast, image blurring etc..)

Create two layers.
The Text
The footage

(note the text is on top of the footage)
  1. Go to the first frame of the shot.
  2. Now on the text layer, create a new RECTANGLE mask that completely covers your text. Make it over-sized on the horizontal.. and pretty tight on the vertical..
  3. Set the MASK opacity to like 80% (so you can still see all the text while your work)
  4. Turn on KEY FRAMES for Mask Path. (I always forget this and 20 frames later realized I lost all my changes!)
  5. Turn on mask feather about 14 px (adjust to taste)
  6. Now move to the first frame where you want the text to start to appear.
  7. Go back ONE frame (just before the start of the "un masking" if you will.
  8. Drop a KEY FRAME here. AE will create the TWEEN (in between) key frames automatically, so without this KEY FRAME, the mask animation will start WAY BACK and the first frame, you dont want that, its confusing..
  9. Go forward one frame, and move the top of the mask down just enough to revel the right amount of the text (assuming hand is LOWERING from chin..etc) Adjust the mask feathering to blend in with any motion blur..
  10. Go to the next frame..
  11. Repeat from step nine until the text is fully revealed.
  12. Set mask opacity back to 100%
 
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Just duplicate the footage layer and move it above the type layer.
Mask the hand on the top video layer to cover up the text.
Animate the mask moving with the hand.
 
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wheatgrinder said:
this is classic rotoscoping, and is a tedious pain in the but for LONG takes, but a few seconds of screen time, its doable.

First, make sure your DONE editing. You don't want to waste an evening rotoscoping a shot only to NOT use it in the film! (been there, done that!)
Click to expand...


wheat, do you edit your film, then throw it into After Effects?
I was thinking about editing my clips in AE then throwing it into editing..
 
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verta123 said:
In adobe after effects I'm trying to have text appear from behind a persons hand. The character has his hand to his chin and then he moves it down. When he moves his hand down i want a word to appear there. I'm not quite sure how to pull this off. I keep thinking i need to do something involving masking but I'm not to sure. Can anyone help?
Click to expand...

I would say using key frames from my own experience!! You could set the key frames so that the text moves in time with his hand or even have the words fade in or just appear
 
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