Week 6 Notes

Trackmattes
are like masks but not made with the pen tool


Lumatrackmattes
It looks at the photoshop file and looks at the luminosity
It takes the shape and cuts another into that shape, like a cookie cutter.
The trackmat is the cookie cutter, and the ae layer is what you are cutting.

Alpha Trackmatte
Based on the photoshop alpha channel.
In channel view in Photoshop you will see the alpha channel.
When you just look at the alpha channel in PS you will see that it is like a black and white cookie cutter. You have to manually make the alpha channel if you want to use it as an Alpha track matte.

Illustrator files automatically have alpha channels.

The white part is kept and the black part invisible.
(you can invert the trackmatte to reverse the effect)

When you place the trackmatte in the project you have to define the relationship of that object.
In the blending modes.

Steps to make the trackmatte
1. Import a film or something you want to cut out.
2. Import the trackmatte
3. The trackmatte needs to be above the video you want to cut out.
4. Toggle the swiches/modes button at the very very bottom of the timeline.
5. The layer you are cutting out you must toggle down to say if its an Alpha or Luma trackmatte.
     (you are not setting the trackmatte layer, you are changing the layer underneath the trackmatte)

You can use movies as trackmattes.

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Brainstorm
Animation > Browse Presets > Backgrounds
Select one of the backgrounds and add it to the composition.
Once its on there hit F3 to change the settings of that layer. F3 opens the effects window for that layers.
To get Brainstorm
Click the icon that looks like a thought bubble with a light bulb.

Create a solid - Layer > New Solid
Browse presets
Backgrounds - we have to edit these backgrounds so they are not recognizable and they match the project.


 U
* A shortcut to get the animation stuff
This gives you all the yellow diamonds for the animation preset, so you don't have to toggle down all the effects in the layer. You can then drag all the diamonds to your specifications.

F3
gets you the expression tab

To change colors
F3
Tritone

Homework Example

Week 4
week_six



Examples