masking the sky in the background

Phillysteak · Post by **Phillysteak** » Tue Aug 07, 2007 1:35 am

hello all, newbie here. I have done the tutorials (most of them anyway) and have tried very hard and PATIENTLY to follow the jail break masking tutorial. My scene is a folder of my subject and a folder of the background. I have a vector layer in front of both of them with alpha (creating a tint). I want to create a glow (which i have done) against my subject and background. Problem: I want to exclude the nighttime sky. HELP PLEASE!

Genete · Post by **Genete** » Tue Aug 07, 2007 6:04 am

Can you share the your trial of masking?
It is needed to put every group layer and vector layer involved in the composition in another group layer and make the masking operation there.
Try to create the following composition:

-GLOBAL GROUP LAYER
--GLOW LAYER
--CHARACTER GROUP LAYER
--BACKGROUND GROUP LAYER
--NIGH SKY LAYER

You ave to set the Global Group to "Hide all" and set:
-NIGHT SKY to "Don't mask"
-BACKGROUND to "Add to mask"
- and CHARACTER AND GLOW to "Mask this layer"

Hope it works.
-G

heyvern · Post by **heyvern** » Tue Aug 07, 2007 8:37 pm

Keep in mind that not all masking setups will show correctly in preview. You must render to see some more complex nested masking set ups.

I always use a render to see if my masking is correct. I don't rely on just the preview.

-vern

Phillysteak · Post by **Phillysteak** » Tue Aug 07, 2007 10:08 pm

YEA!!! What i ended up doing was pulling the night sky layer down out of the background group by itself. Genete, everything was correct but the Character Group. Character Group "add to mask". Everything looks great! watch for my first animation test after i clean it up towards the end of the week in "Show Your Work". thanks again G! BTW Vern, use to bug me when i first got it why some things didn't look right in "preview" instead of "render". makes you wonder why they even bother with a preview selection.