Text with a matte

[Halloween Jack]

Hi folks,

I thought this should really be a simple thing but I’m having trouble getting the mattes to combine.

I have a text layer with drop shadows and colours, ie it needs it’s own key. I also need to bring this on with a matte. It seems you can’t add a matte to a text gap effect. I also need this to be ‘neat’ group of layers so I can easily drop it on top of footage and easily move it around.

What’s the simplest solution for this? I was hoping to just use soft effects and containers.

I guess Batch would do the trick, but how would people have done this before batch was introduced?

Any ideas?

Cheers

[Anonymous]

Hi there. Here’s a kind of connected question, even more simple.

Say if I had a red solid, a circle matte and a square matte. I want to apply both mattes to the red solid. I would imagine I need to use a matte source node to combine them, but I can’t seem to find how to link them.

Obviously I want to combine them in a ‘live’ manner, not just blend them together then use the result. They need to be replacable by moving mattes and independently movable.

Any suggestions?

Thanks 🙂

[shannones riders]

hi there,

The easiest if you add your text in action if you don’t want to use batch. As much as I know flame timeline from desktop isn’t very good for this type of work.

You actually have answered your question, you only need to add more settings:
– add red colour as front and the circle as matte in action. add front source to this layer
– add the square as front and matte, turn front off for this layer and connect it’s image under front source
– now hit on the squares layer twice and check the sources menu: choose custom/front/matte

This way the square blends over the circle. You can move them individually. If you hit F6, you can check what is going on under the source you selected. You can change layer order as you would usually do in action (keep the source node selected).

Hope this helps.

pH.

[Anonymous]

Hi there, sorry for the realllly long delay, I’ve been very busy over the last few weeks.

firstly, thanks for the response 🙂

Oh dear, I still don’t get this.

So regarding my first question – is there really no way to do this on the timeline? It’s just coloured text being brought on by a matte. It seems strange.

And the second situation with the circle, square and colours – I’m not sure I understand your instructions. I did get it to work, but using a matte source not a front source, but I still don’t understand the logic of what’s going on.

I’m going to carry on playing with and see if it makes more sense.

Does anyone know if there’s a simple guide to this concept anywhere?

Cheers

[Steven]

Hi,

Sorry for the late reply.

Summary…. I would suggest creating your text on the desktop as a clip. and than comping it into the timeline.

On the desktop go into the text tool and produce a fill clip of your text on black and than create a alpha/matte clip of your text over a black background…. secondly, create your matte that will wipe your text onto the screen as a black and white clip on the desktop.

In the timeline, you would have you background images on layer 1. Create a second layer in the timeline. Place your text fill clip on layer tw. Right now it should not key over the background. Select the text fill clip in the timeline and apply an AXIS softFX to the clip. Click the matte button and you should be able to use the blue cursor to select your text matte clip on the desktop. Once you have done this your text will than key through to the background on the timeline.

This process has basically given you a single clip on layer one which is in fact a container. Select the container clip and at the bottom left of the interface you should see a “container” button. PRess the “E” button to inter into the container. You will see two video tracks. V1.1 is the fill clip and V2.1 is the matte clip. Currently you will see the result of the fill clip. Next to the video tabs to the left of the timeline you will see a P icon and and S icon. Click on the S icon to switch the focus so that you see the output of the matte video track. That video track currently has 1 layer which is your text matte. Add another layer to the Matte video track and place the clip which will wipe your matte on to the second video layer. So what you should see when you scrub the timeline is a combination of your wiping on matte and the text matte. You can use the axis blend modes to mix them together if that’s what you require. Once you are satisfied with the look of your final matte, click the S icon again to switch the primary and secondary tracks back to the way they were originally. The rule is that the fill is always the primary track and the matte is always the secondary track.

When you exit the container you should see your text composited over your background and when the timeline is scrubbed, it should wipe on from the first matte and than combine with your text matte.

I have given you a very long winded explanation but this takes a few minutes to do when you get used to the workflow.

Regards
Grant

[Anonymous]

Great thanks for the help Grant.

I will try that. It does sound like the text will not be editable in situation though. Also you wouldn’t be able to copy this container to a different version and simply change the text. But maybe I’ve misunderstood.

I’ll check it out cheers.

(Just going to send you a PM 😉 )

[Anonymous]

Ah, I can’t work out how to PM here. Perhaps not possible?

Anyway was just going to say hi… it’s Dan here from C4, we met a couple of years back. Hope all’s well and thanks again for the help.

[Steven]

Hi Dan,

I do remember you… Good to hear from you….

Two things which might help you.

1: You can copy a container to another timeline. Simply select the container clip and copy it to the source area. Go to your new version and drop it onto of the edit at the right point. It should just key through the new background

2: You could change the text in 2 ways.

a: Make a new text clip. Go into the container and replace the text matte with the new one and it will update

b: If you created your text with clip history on, you could just go into the container and enter into the text clip history. Update the text and the history updates to show the new result. It does work quite well.

I hope this helps you out and I’ll try drop you a PM too!

All the best.

Regards
Grant

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