after effects help (I know...)

I have a wee bit of a problem.

When I go to have a little preview, I come back to the layer I am working on only to find that all my anchor points on the outlined saber are frozen, meaning that I can't move one point without moving the rest.

Y'all know what I'm talking about?

 

Do all the anchor points fully yellow, or do they look hollow?

 

fully yellow

It only two were yellow, I'd be fine

 

I had that same problem when I was starting out. To fix it, down in the Composition window, click on some nothing to deselect everything. Then reselect your mask by clicking on it's name (ie. Solid 1 unless you renamed it). Then you should see the yellow outline come back up around your mask with no boxes at the corners. When it's like this, when you click on a corner, the boxes should pop up again hollow and then you can move them independantly of eachother. If they're all solid yellow, then you're going to be moving the whole thing.

Hope that helps.

 

Yeah, that was annoying for a while till you figure it out... and then of course you feel really stupid for not reaslizing earlier.

We've all done it, I'm sure. Except Ryan, appearantly he, like, wrote AE or something.

 

funny, i havn't had this happen to me before

 

lucky bloke

 

try this click on nothing then click back on the layer see if that helps

 

Heres a tip... I started in AE 4.1 ... in 4.1 you CANNOT work in a mask in the composition window (not in any way I figured out).. you HAVE to do it in the layer window.

So I had to do the masking on an actual footage layer... and then apply the "fill" effect with white to actually make the bit white, and then whichever extra effects needed. (In the beginning - embarressed look - I didn't see the 'fill' effect and used max brightness/contrast to get white!!)

Anyway... I noticed when upgrading to 5 that the mask editing IN THE COMPOSITITION WINDOW is much inferior to mask-editing IN A LAYER WINDOW... coz you cant just rectangle-select two points by dragging the mouse over them... if you try that in the COMPOSITION window, you will grab and move a layer! If you do this in a LAYER window you can easily grab two points at a time and move them.

Very quick way to move lightsabre-ends.

/Z

 

I know exactly what you're talking about too. Another way to fix it is when all of the points are lit up, shift+click one to de-select it, then click it once more and you should be back in business.

 

"you cant just rectangle-select two points by dragging the mouse over them"

Yes you can. Try shift-click/drag

 

I feel for you. This is the most irritating thing in AE I think.

I use some shift+ctrl+alt+a combination I think to deselect all points. I found this in a book somewhere....

It's not easy on the fingers!

Pete

 

*sigh*
Hold shift and click on a side or vertice to deselect it. Then, happiness.

 

Ditto, I had that prob too, but now Im used to it.

~Neszis~