Guided mask?

[curlybushman]

Hiyall,

I could use a hand. I would like to have a motion tweened symbol run along a motion guide on one layer above a background layer- so far so good - I would like this symbol to be a mask however, to reveal the underlying background as it moves over it - not so good from this point on - "Mask" is grayed out in Layer Properties. Is there anyway around this? I've tried to turning the guided symbol into a movie clip and then using the clip as a mask over the background but all this comes up with on Test Movie is a blank screen...

Any wisdom out there?

[Alwyn]

You can also use any type of animation, except motion paths, to make the mask move.

Maybe you could create an MC with the mask and actionscript it to move along your path by setting the co-ordinates?

[curlybushman]

Action scripting with co-ordinates, mmmm...

There must be a quicker and easier way out there somewhere.

ps. I always try and read the manual B4 posting a question. Thanks for quoting the manual anyways. Never does any harm... I think.

[Alwyn]

Sorry about having to quote the manual at you

You know, the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that this is a natural thing to want to do - move a mask along a motion guide. I mean, if you can move an object, why not a mask? One for Flash 6 maybe ?

Should you find a solution, I'd be really interested to see how it works.

[curlybushman]

Fingers crossed for it to appear in Flash 6.

"Estudioworks" posted a link for me on the
Flash 5GenHelp board, I'll have to wait and check it out at a friend's whose got a PC coz I'm a MacMan and couldn't read the download. It looks real promising though. I suspect the answer to my question lies within. Check it out for yourself.

http://www.flashkit.com/movies/Effec...66/index.shtml

Keep me posted if you find any gold in there.

[Alwyn]

Yep, I can see how that works - nicely done too. Basically the mask is tweened over the car and there is a layer holding a graphic of the car's outline but it's not actually following a motion path.

If you need to move your mask in a straight line, this would work really well. If you need it to follow an irregular path, I think this would be a lot more difficult to achieve using this method.

Kudos to the movie maker, I liked it a lot !