From the course: After Effects Apprentice: 05 Creating Transparency

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Using RotoBezier masks

Using RotoBezier masks - After Effects Tutorial

From the course: After Effects Apprentice: 05 Creating Transparency

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Using RotoBezier masks

If you're already used to drawing paths in Photoshop or Illustrator, you probably find Bezier paths very easy to deal with. I go ahead and play around these handles to move my points after the fact, by holding the Command or Ctrl key, moving my points and moving my handles. However, if you're new to masking, this whole concept of clicking-and-dragging to create mask shapes maybe a bit fiddly and it doesn't feel quite right. Well, there is an alternative in After Effects. First I am going to get rid of this. Layer > Mask and Remove Mask. And with the Pen tool selected, I am going to enable the RotoBezier option. What RotoBezier does is it eliminates the handles. All you need to do is click a few points in a window and After Effects will automatically calculate a smooth path between them. You don't need to drag handles while you're drawing. However, it is still possible to adjust what is happening through those individual vertexes. I am going to go ahead to Layer > Mask > Remove Mask…

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