Hey guys, its Axel, and I am finally back in my house after the fire!
Still finishing getting the office put back together, but I set aside some time to create
this video which looks at masking, in HitFilm 8.
Masking controls were greatly improved in version 8 of the software, so you have better
control than ever.
Masks work exactly the same in both the Express and Pro versions, so this tutorial applies
to everybody.
There are three primary tools for creating masks.
The Rectangle Mask tool creates Square or rectangular masks.
The Ellipse Mask tool creates round or elliptical masks.
And the Freehand Mask tool create masks of any other possible shape you can imagine.
To add a geometric mask, just select the tool you want to use, and drag on the Viewer to
create the shape.
If you get a white Ghostbusters symbol without the ghost, also called the Universal No, it
will be because you don’t have a layer selected on the timeline, so you need to select the
layer you want to apply the mask to, then proceed with dragging on the viewer to add
the shape.
Hold shift while dragging to get a perfect circle or square.
To add a Freehand Shape, select the layer, select the tool, then begin drawing your shape
on the viewer.
Each time you click anywhere to add a new point, it will be connected to the previous
point by a straight line.
You can also create a curved line segment, by clicking and dragging out a control handle,
while keeping your finger on the mouse button.
If you position the cursor over an existing point, you can reposition it.
And if you need to add a new point, click the line between two existing points where
you want to add it.
If the segment you add the point to is curved, the new point will be curved as well.
Once the shape is completed, click the first point again to close it and activate the mask.
The area inside the mask is retained, and everything outside the mask is removed.
Any mask can be inverted, though, by clicking the Invert icon next to the mask on the timeline.
In the controls, there is also an Invert property, which is directly linked to that button, so
you can also invert from the controls, but the button is conveniently visible even when
the controls are closed.
The Shape controls let you further adjust the mask.
Expansion shifts the edges of the mask in or out, to fine tune its shape.
The Feather menu controls what direction the edge feather is applied in.
The default is both, so the feather is centered on the edge, and fades out in both directions.
But you can select In or Out to feather the edge in one direction, which can be handy
for controlling exactly where the feather stops.
For example, if you wanted to feather the edges of a layer, you can drag a mask to define
where you want to edge to stop, then set the Feather to in, so all the feathering is inside,
and nothing at all will appear outside your defined edge.
Feather Strength sets the width in pixels of the edge feather.
Roundness smooths any sharp corners in the mask shape, by the radius you select.
OK, now that we have created our mask, let’s look at ways to edit them.
There are two distinct ways to edit a mask shape.
These will come into play if you need to adjust the mask path to fine tune its shape, or when
you are animating the shape of a mask to change over time.
The first method is using the Selection Tool, and the second is using the Freehand Shape
Tool.
The Selection tool is used to adjust the mask as a whole, like you would a layer.
You can change the Position, Scale, or Rotation of the mask in the controls panel or using
the Viewer Controls.
Transformations are applied relative to the Anchor Point.
Click anywhere in the mask and drag to reposition it.
Drag any corner to scale the mask from the center.
By default the mask will scale uniformly, but you can hold Shift while you drag to unlink
the height and width and allow freeform scaling.
Hold Control, or Command if you are on a Mac, to uniformly scale from the opposite corner
rather than from the anchor point.
Or combine them, holding Shift and Control, to freeform scale from the opposite corner.
And if you need to rotate the mask, hold Alt and drag any corner.
If you need to reposition the Anchor Point, hold Shift and drag, and you can reposition
it anywhere you like.
Right-click the anchor and you will see an option to center it within the mask path.
Also, all of these adjustments can be keyframed in the Controls panel, in the usual fashion.
Please see our tutorial on keyframing if you need more info on how to use that feature.
Sometimes, you will need to adjust the actual shape of the mask itself, using individual
control points.
For this, you will want to use the Freehand Shape tool.
With the Freehand Shape tool, you can click individual points to select them, shift-click
multiple points to select them, or double-click any point to select all the points in the
entire mask.
On closed masks, you can also drag a marquee around specific points to select them.
When multiple points are selected you get a bounding box around them, and especially
when all points are selected this looks very similar to the bounding box used by the Selection
tool.
But they are fundamentally different.
Where the selection tool adjusts the entire mask as a single object, the Freehand Mask
tool alters each selected point individually.
When a single point is selected, you can drag the point to reposition it.
If keyframing is enabled for the Path property, then you can animate the point’s position.
The Path property stores the keyframe data for the entire path, including every point
that makes up your mask.
If you right-click a point, you get a menu where you can convert it to Linear, which
is the default option and creates a corner at the point, Locked Curved, which creates
a smooth curve through the point, or Unlocked curved, which gives you a corner with curved
segments on either side.
When working with curved points, the Bezier control handles are dashed lines, so you can
easily distinguish them from the mask path.
The right-click menu also has options to Select all points, invert your selection, Remove
the selected points, or Reset the point to its original location.
With two or more points selected, you can use the bounding box to translate, scale or
rotate them.
The controls are similar to the controls when using the Selection tool, though again, any
changes made using the Freehand Shape tool will alter the individual point data, rather
than the mask as a whole.
When the path is animated, each point will always follow a linear path from one keyframe
position to the next.
You can rotate, scale, or drag the points to new locations, HitFilm doesn’t care how
they got there, it just looks at the actual point position in this keyframe, and the position
in the next keyframe, and linearly moves the point from one to the next.
So especially if you want to animate rotation, make sure you use the Selection tool controls
to do so.
Also, when you animate the Path, you can’t control the interpolation method used, it
is always linear.
But by keyframing Position, Rotation or Scale using the Selection tool, you do have full
control over the interpolation used.
Drag any corner of the bounding box to scale uniformly from the center.
Hold shift for freeform scaling, to adjust the height and width independently.
Use CTRL as a modifier to scale the selection from the corner opposite the one you are dragging.
Combine shift and CTRL to freeform scale from the opposite corner.
Hold Alt and drag any corner to rotate the selected points around the center of the bounding
box.
You may have noticed one other control in the Transform properties of masks, the Extra
Transform control, which has no value, nor any way to edit its setting.
And that is because its extra.
If you get to work and realize you left your regular Transform control in your other jeans,
your Transform control, you can use this one.
Actually the Extra Transform is a special property used by Mocha HitFilm when you import
animated masks from mocha.
It isn’t necessary for general mask use, which is why you can’t edit it directly.
But what you can do, is ignore it.
This is not the transform control you are looking for.
You may go about your business.
Move along.
The last bit of control for masks is the Blend menu, which mainly comes into play when you
have multiple masks on a single layer.
If you only have one mask, then Add is all you need.
But let’s use some situations involving multiple overlapping masks to look at these
options.
Add does what it says on the tin, it adds the new mask to the previous mask, so the
area of both masks is visible.
The opposite is Subtract, which removes the current mask from the previous mask area.
Intersect shows only the area where the two masks intersect, or overlap.
And Replace, not surprisingly, replaces the old mask area with the new mask area.
And that leaves us with Lighten and Darken, the least intuitive of the options in this
menu.
For these options, you need multiple masks with adjusted opacity.
If you only have one mask, or if you have several overlapping masks but they are all
completely opaque, then just ignore these options.
You won’t need them.
Darken is very similar to Intersect.
But, while Intersect adds the opacity values where masks overlap, Darken compares the opacity
value for each mask in overlapping areas, and uses the highest value for that area.
Lighten is similar to Add, but while Add combines opacity values in areas where the masks overlap,
Lighten uses the lowest opacity value in overlapping areas.
So, using these controls you can create and animate masks in any shape you need, to control
which parts of your layers are visible at any given time, and effectively combine layers
in your composites.
Hopefully this info is helpful to all of our new users, and even our long-time users will
likely benefit from this explanation of the improvements to masking available in version
8 of HitFilm.
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