Trying to figure out complex masks

1

I’ve been searching around on the forums trying to figure out complex animated masks. I know you can’t have layers in your mask animation as it’ll only show the first layer. I’m trying to get transitions similar to the image transitions on www.exopolis.com . I’ve been using growing circles, kind of like drops hitting and growing, that reveal the picture underneath, and they’re all at different times and in different locations. So i’ve got one circle on each layer since you can’t tween multiple objects. I’ve got all these layers with the circles all in one movieclip, which is on a mask layer on my main timeline. Is there a way to get an animation with layers to mask? I know this can be done with actionscript but actionscript with animations like this is a bit abstract. It would be hard to know whether or not the entire picture space would be reavealed in the end.

If that made any sense at all to any of you… do any of you know a simple workaround for this? Thanks.

2

you can do this easily as you pointed out. set this up:

  • first lower layer is your “loader” movieclip with the image u want masked.
  • second layer is the mask movie clip, same size as the loader.
  • double click mask mc and construct your animation making sure that you cover the entire image eventually.
  • put a stop action on it and go back to main timeline
  • set the mask mc as a mask and voila, the start of a nice masking transition.
3

Aww man, i feel stupid… the thing was was i had it set up exactly how you said, and i just found that it wasn’t working because the mask movie clip was set to act like a graphic on the stage… don’t know how that happened but it works great now. Thanks. :cap: