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Written by Rawpulse
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Friday, 10 March 2006 |
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Create a killer mask effect!
This is a great little effect that can be used as a banner or header or whatever else you might have in mind. The outcome depends on how long you're willing to spend to make it look good. To see an example of the basic mask effect, click here (Note: this example frame rate is lower than it was intended to be). There's also a more complex example at the bottom.
To start, adjust your settings so the frame rate is set to 25. Then on your first layer, select the rectangle tool. Draw a dark rectangle, whatever size you want.
Add two more layers to your timeline. We don't need to rename them as we will only use these three. On layer 2, select the pencil tool. Use it to draw lines across your black rectangle. It should look something like this when we are finished.
Now click on layer 3. Select the rectangle tool again from the tools menu. The color of this rectangle doesn't matter, as it will be masked. It should be the same height as your large rectangle. Place it to the left hand side of your other rectangle. At this stage, it should look like this.
Convert your new small rectangle to a movie clip symbol by selecting it and pressing F8. Make sure movie clip is selected.
Now you need to add keyframes to each of the layers on frame 35.
At frame 35 of your top layer (Layer 3), move your rectangle over to the right hand side of the large rectangle.
Now, right click where it says Layer 3, and select Mask from the drop down menu. This will make the white lines on the layer beneath invisible. They will only be seen when our small rectangle moves across them. Since we already moved our small rectangle across, all we need to do is add a motion tween and we are finished. To do this, right click anywhere between frames 1 and 35 of layer 3, and select Create Motion Tween. Test your movie by pressing Control + Enter.
As I mentioned at the beginning, it depends on how much time you spend on perfecting the lines, as to how the outcome will be. This is a great effect to experiment with. Change the mask rectangle size and shape, change the colors, and lines etc.
To see a more complex example, click here. If you had problems with this tutorial, tell us about it on the forum and we'll help you out.
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Last Updated ( Friday, 10 March 2006 )
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Tutorials 
