I've trying to see if this plugin will work for a current project I'm working on so I downloaded the trial to only find out I can't render out motion tests or even RAM preview using the trial version. Is there some way to purchase it and try it but return it if it doesn't work out?
unfortunately, there is no temporary license available. Of course, if the plugin doesn't work on your computer, you could get a refund, but hopefully, it'll work
You can try to explain your project, and I can tell you if it'll fit.
If you want to be sure it'll fit a specific task, you can send me a project (you'll need to open a support ticket to send me the .aep). I'll have a look at it and tell you if it can be performed with Mask Avenger.
I have bought and installed mask avenger on mac OSX mavericks.
It's running fine except the fine that it's quite slow. But the real problem is I can't undo... for exemple If I create Nulls for my mask avenger vertices and I move them, I can't undo that action...
you're right, the undo is a problem. I'm still working on it, but I must say its difficult to find an efficient workaround.
In fact, when Mask Avenger renders a mask, it modifies the mask itself, wich is an undoable action. The inner code "retains" this action, so you can undo.
But when the action is generated by another action (like moving the nulls) the "generative action" is added to the undo stack everytime the image is rerendered...
Sorry about that, I can't do better for the moment (I'm not giving up, though...)
About the lack of speed, there are actions that are much slower than others. For example, avoid using Mask Avenger on adjustment layers, as it will cancel the sublayers render, then re-compute.
Mask Avenger is a bit special as it modifies masks at render time (unlike AE).
If you need, you can send me an .aep file, and I'll check if it can be accelerated. (you'll need to open a support ticket to send me the file).
I purchased your script hoping that it would give me individual points from the vertices of an animated mask. It seems that it only produces static points. Can you please let me know if there is something I am doing wrong here?
Mask Avenger does give individual vertex control. However, if you're using the demo version, the mask updates only when you change parameters, or move in the timeline.
Ram preview and render are only available for registered license.
If you purchased a license and still get static points, just send me a .aep file (you'll need to open a support ticket), I'll take a look at it.
Hi François, thanks for your answer and for trying to find a solution to that problem!
Another thing I noticed is that sometimes when working with round shapes masks, mask avenger breaks the tangents so they finally appear angular and I can't modify those tangents. Is there a way to send you a AE comp to show you what I'm talking about?
Shape Avenger is not working at all. I purchased my copy today hoping to animate some shape layers, but I can bypass that by converting them to masks, just a bit of extra work is all. I also tested this in a new comp, typed in SHAPE like in the demo, converted it to shape layers, and applied the plugin. That's when the extend script window popped up to start debugging. There's only 1 line in the code, so it says error at line 1.
here's a little precision on mask interpolation with Mask Avenger (it's been asked, it means it wasn't clear):
there are 3 different modes. They affect the path followed by each vertex / tangent.
_1st mode is "standard". By default, it follows exactly what AE does. Vertices / tangents are interpolated in straight lines.
However, as it is lead by point parameters, you can give a path / trajectory to each point individually. To see the path handles, you have to open a layer window (like all other effects, except puppet points)
_2nd mode is "smart (gravity center)". The position of each vertex / tangent is computed on every frame so it keeps 2d volumes, based on gravity center of the shape. For example, if you rotate your mask, it will keep it's basic shape during interpolation.
_3rd mode is "smart (anchor point)". Basically the same than above, but points are computed based on a point parameter you can animate. Really usefull if you want to rotate a mask around one of its vertices, for example.
For "smart" modes, you can check "Demo 2" video on the product page, it is shown in the end of the demo.
Hi, is there any possibility to use the shape avenger inside a precomp with activated collapsing transformations? The lines are gone when i activates it.cheers
Hi, Im considering buying mask avenger looks like what ive been after for a while.
- Im currently using adobe cc and do a lot of work on both my work machine and home machine via adobe's synced settings. If i wanted the plugin on both machines would i need to purchase this twice or would i be able to install this on both machines using the one licence?
Mask Avenger allows you to mimic 3D (like giving a Z value to a vertex), but this is translated as 2D values before it's sent to AE. AE doesn't deal with 3D for masks... It would be great though :-)
Im a little confused about something, I have 3d nulls coming out of Maya and being imported to AE as an ascii file. I am trying to attach a mask/spline from one null to the other. I noticed your comment below, so Im wondering is this possible? I see your description of "3D null controllers!" I have attempted to do this, but the masks are far off from the nulls, and they need to be precise. Is there a video I should refer too?
the comment was about "real" 3D features, like depth of field.
But in your case, it should work just fine. Make a comp size layer, create a mask and apply Mask_Avenger. Then, just type the following expression in your "Point parameters":
thisComp.layer("your null name here").toComp([0,0,0])
It will retrieve the 2d screen coordinates of your nulls and your mask vertices should follow the nulls.
If it's still not working, just send me a file and I'll have a look at it (I won't be able before tuesday, though...)
I have a solid with a spline on it at the top of the comp, and I am linking one of its verts to the null directly underneath. I tried a few different ways, but its still giving me an expression error. Maybe syntax? Not sure. Can you please check this out and let me know what I should do....and thank you so much for your time. I love this plug in and I very much want to use this. The shot is stripped down to just nulls cameras and text. Its for a documentry about the Bergen Belsen Holocaust camp. The goal is to show the transport of all camp prisoners being consolidated to Bergen Belsen at the end of the war. I planned on showing this with an animated stroke...and its the only way I can figure this will work.
Uh oh....one thing....I was not snapping the middle vertice to anything. I was hoping to control it independantly of mask avenger....Is that posssible? As of now, If I move the mniddle vert, it pops right back to where it was when I first connected the first vert. Does that make sense?
for the "poping" vertex, you have to move it via the point parameter of Mask Avenger. Otherwise, like you said, it will come back to its initial position.
And for the tangents, just switch the "Path mode" from "Vertices only" to "Vertices and tangents". New point parameters will appear, controlling the in and out tangents. Just animate them like vertices, with keyframes and/or expressions.
"or the "poping" vertex, you have to move it via the point parameter of Mask Avenger. Otherwise, like you said, it will come back to its initial position." Thanks....Ill mess with this some more...I did as you mentioned, but it didnt seem to matter. Ill try again today to see if I can get this to work "
And for the tangents, just switch the "Path mode" from "Vertices only" to "Vertices and tangents". New point parameters will appear, controlling the in and out tangents. Just animate them like vertices, with keyframes and/or expressions.
" Thanks...Ill look at this as well. I noticed this property yesterday after I sent response, but for some reason, as above, it wasnt responding to my input. Will try again! Thank you so much for your effort.
Thought you should know, this plugin is not currently working with AE 13.1, due to the known bug that causes an internal verification error with property-less plugins (in this case the Render Mask effect). Very frustrating, though not at all your fault
Thanks Francois, the 2 different machines isn't really an important part of my question.
My question is:
Will baking the MaskAvenger-animated mask give me an animated mask that I can then use in MaskBrush & MaskFill please?
Secondly:
Can you also tell me why I get no movement on my MaskAvenger-animated mask whilst RAM previewing or rendering please? Is this also something that gets sorted when I buy a license?
I was doing something wrong before which I've corrected now, so with that in mind, along with your helpful answers i'm rushing headlong into getting a license for your extraordinary plug-in!
I'm using layer avenger quite a lot and then creating nulls from the script. Mostly works OK but quite a few times I get expression errors for no apparent reason i.e. I do something completely unrelated like copy a text layer into the comp - the error is: error at line 1 in property.... Couldn't project comp point onto layer in fromcomptosurface.
If I search and re-anable the expressions, all is OK.
Any idea what's going wrong?
In addition to that I'm now seeing other errors when closing AE - AEGP Plugin BAO Mask_Avenger: Leaked effect refs (5027::12)
the error on closing is normal. It's due to conflicts about who "owns" the mask between AE and Mask Avenger. When they have a conflict, AE wins (I let him win ;-)) and Mask Avenger's rendering is considered as uncomplete. That's where the message comes from, but it's totally harmless (I only had to keep the message visible for programming reasons...)
For the other issue, the error seems to come from the expression itself: fromCompToSurface() is one of the expressions that can retrieve a "bad" value to AE, then it's disabled. For example, if you turn a layer in 3D so that you only see the edge, you'll get this error. To avoid it, you can try replacing fromCompToSurface() by fromComp(), but it depends on your project...
If you see this issue quite often, feel free to open a support ticket and send me a project, I'll take a look at it.
It doesnt happen enough to look at it further just yet - maybe 5-6 times during a couple of hours animating. I need to get this project out ASAP, so need to concentrate getting it done.
I do have another issue though that's causing some grief in a particular comp I'm animating - I have three shapes with 4 verticies - have applied shape avenger and selected vertices only. I then produced nulls and have parented 2 of them to one layer and 2 to another layer. So I have 12 nulls in all for the three layers with associated expressions. I'm now getting a really weird problem when trying to edit a text layer. the cursor can click into the text but as soon as I type any character, the text layer is de-selected. I'm guessing that somehow processing of the expressions is causing AE to de-select the text layer. Maybe there are too many expressions and that's causing a problem. There are various other wiggle and other expressions on other layers. However, if I delete the 12 nulls and the shape layers that were 'avenged' the problem goes away.
Have you seen this happen or can you think of anything I can try to stop the issue happening?
Cheers!
Paul.
Edit - oh, sometime I can't even select the text - as soon as I double click to edit, it gets de-selected.
Mmmm, I'm also seeing other problems too with this comp - trying to drag keyframes becomes unresponsive and the keyframes depart from the mouse cursor and zoom off down the timeline! Also, undo seems to be broken - if I make a change, it then can take many CTRL-Z's to revert - sometimes it can be as many as 10 presses or more. Something weird is going on. Pretty sure it's still related to AE processing the expressions maybe?
the keyframes dragging problem, the ctrl + Z and the text editing problem come from the same thing. Unfortunately, I've tried a lot of things to fix it, but couldn't find a way yet. I'm still working on it, with very little hope of result
Without going too deep in details, Mask Avenger races against AE to control masks (layer effects are not supposed to do so...) So, for example, when you drag a key, Avenger renders the mask, then AE re-renders the layer with the "new" mask, and so on as long as the key moves. It can be re-rendered 100 times before you release the key, and sometimes leads to bugs like this (and fill up the undo stack...).
The best and easiest work around is to press the Caps lock key before dragging keys. It'll pause Avenger while AE deals with the User Interface (key dragging, text editing...). You can also disable Avenger manually during that time, or work in "bake mode".
Another thing though: you can try changing the layers order in your comp. I know it's pretty counter-intuitive, but it can really work. If your 'Avenged' layer is computed before the others (so it's at the bottom of the comp, with the highest index), you'll see a lot less bugs and it'll render faster.
I'm sorry I can't give you a better solution by now. When you have more time, don't hesitate to open a support ticket and send me a file, I'll be happy to help.
I did find that baking helped and stopped the problem happening. I didn't find caps lock worked at all though - but that seems to be something else weird going on in AE. It's not until you work on very complex projects that all the weird stuff in AE comes out of the cracks. BTW - should MA work with multi-processing or not? Can't get it to work at the moment but maybe that's another effect or plugin causing problems.
MA itself doesn't deal with multi-processing as it only renders the mask itself (and it's pretty fast).
But as far as I can tell, it never caused any problem with other plugins. Anyway, if you want to get the maximum speed when rendering, the best is to bake your masks first. If you disable MA when baking is done, you'll gain a little speed too.
It's plugins and scripts like these that make AE so good, even if there are long-standing bugs and issues here and there in AE itself. I know you certainly won't get rich developing and supporting these but your efforts really are appreciated.
I purchased your script hoping that it would give me individual points from the vertices of an animated mask. It seems that it only produces static points. Can you please let me know if there is something I am doing wrong here?
Thanks for your help.
Mark
Im a little confused about something, I have 3d nulls coming out of Maya and being imported to AE as an ascii file.
I am trying to attach a mask/spline from one null to the other. I noticed your comment below, so Im wondering is this possible?
I see your description of "3D null controllers!"
I have attempted to do this, but the masks are far off from the nulls, and they need to be precise.
Is there a video I should refer too?
thanks
C
PS I can provide an AE project if that helps
thanks man! Ill try this out! Once the script is in place....
Do I just parent the vertexes as normal?
thanks so much!
No luck with this....here is a link to the shot file.
https://www.yousendit.com/download/ZUcyYnU2bEo5NVhIRHNUQw
I have a solid with a spline on it at the top of the comp, and I am linking one of its verts to the null directly underneath. I tried a few different ways, but its still giving me an expression error. Maybe syntax? Not sure. Can you please check this out and let me know what I should do....and thank you so much for your time. I love this plug in and I very much want to use this.
The shot is stripped down to just nulls cameras and text. Its for a documentry about the Bergen Belsen Holocaust camp. The goal is to show the transport of all camp prisoners being consolidated to Bergen Belsen at the end of the war. I planned on showing this with an animated stroke...and its the only way I can figure this will work.
thanks again
Thanks Leroy....Great plug in!
C
I was hoping to control it independantly of mask avenger....Is that posssible?
As of now, If I move the mniddle vert, it pops right back to where it was when I first connected the first vert.
Does that make sense?
"or the "poping" vertex, you have to move it via the point parameter of
Mask Avenger. Otherwise, like you said, it will come back to its initial
position."
Thanks....Ill mess with this some more...I did as you mentioned, but it didnt seem to matter. Ill try again today to see if I can get this to work
"
only" to "Vertices and tangents". New point parameters will appear,
controlling the in and out tangents. Just animate them like vertices,
with keyframes and/or expressions.
Thanks...Ill look at this as well. I noticed this property yesterday after I sent response, but for some reason, as above, it wasnt responding to my input. Will try again! Thank you so much for your effort.
I'm using layer avenger quite a lot and then creating nulls from the script. Mostly works OK but quite a few times I get expression errors for no apparent reason i.e. I do something completely unrelated like copy a text layer into the comp - the error is: error at line 1 in property.... Couldn't project comp point onto layer in fromcomptosurface.
If I search and re-anable the expressions, all is OK.
Any idea what's going wrong?
In addition to that I'm now seeing other errors when closing AE - AEGP Plugin BAO Mask_Avenger: Leaked effect refs (5027::12)
It doesnt happen enough to look at it further just yet - maybe 5-6 times during a couple of hours animating. I need to get this project out ASAP, so need to concentrate getting it done.
I do have another issue though that's causing some grief in a particular comp I'm animating - I have three shapes with 4 verticies - have applied shape avenger and selected vertices only. I then produced nulls and have parented 2 of them to one layer and 2 to another layer. So I have 12 nulls in all for the three layers with associated expressions. I'm now getting a really weird problem when trying to edit a text layer. the cursor can click into the text but as soon as I type any character, the text layer is de-selected. I'm guessing that somehow processing of the expressions is causing AE to de-select the text layer. Maybe there are too many expressions and that's causing a problem. There are various other wiggle and other expressions on other layers. However, if I delete the 12 nulls and the shape layers that were 'avenged'
Have you seen this happen or can you think of anything I can try to stop the issue happening?
Cheers!
Paul.
Edit - oh, sometime I can't even select the text - as soon as I double click to edit, it gets de-selected.
I did find that baking helped and stopped the problem happening. I didn't find caps lock worked at all though - but that seems to be something else weird going on in AE. It's not until you work on very complex projects that all the weird stuff in AE comes out of the cracks. BTW - should MA work with multi-processing or not? Can't get it to work at the moment but maybe that's another effect or plugin causing problems.
Great plugin though
Paul.
It's plugins and scripts like these that make AE so good, even if there are long-standing bugs and issues here and there in AE itself. I know you certainly won't get rich developing and supporting these but your efforts really are appreciated.