Nooby after effects help, very urgent! ):

[helpmedfhjsf]

hey guys, under a really tight time strain. basically i want to apply one video over as a mask to my paint effects on a different video. really not sure how. after effects btw, thanks yall are cool dudes.

[smrpix]

Are you saying you want one layer to paint on over a lower layer? Or are you trying to use one layer to limit where a solid color paint effect can appear over another?

[helpmedfhjsf]

Are you saying you want one layer to paint on over a lower layer? Or are you trying to use one layer to limit where a solid color paint effect can appear over another?

the first one, sir

[poisondeathray]

So paint on the top layer then - Double click the top layer to open the layer panel. Pick a brush and paint away....

If you want more help, you're going to have to describe what you want to do more clearly:

What kind of paint ? What kind of effects ?

Did you want parts of the the top video to "show through" or "cover up" the lower video (painting alpha channel) ? Or did you mean solid color paint (like red or green), or cloning ?

What duration and location ? Static paint, or frame by frame ?

[helpmedfhjsf]

So paint on the top layer then - Double click the top layer to open the layer panel. Pick a brush and paint away....

If you want more help, you're going to have to describe what you want to do more clearly:

What kind of paint ? What kind of effects ?

Did you want parts of the the top video to "show through" or "cover up" the lower video (painting alpha channel) ? Or did you mean solid color paint (like red or green), or cloning ?

What duration and location ? Static paint, or frame by frame ?

okay - we got two layers. the top is a texture that i'd like to apply to the paint effect on the movie layer below. i've painted this sort of animated goo all through the movie akin to this: http://vimeo.com/31928186 except instead of white i'd like it to have the texture on the layer above showing through it. does that make sense? it's confusing the hell outta me man

[poisondeathray]

okay - we got two layers. the top is a texture that i'd like to apply to the paint effect on the movie layer below. i've painted this sort of animated goo all through the movie akin to this: http://vimeo.com/31928186 except instead of white i'd like it to have the texture on the layer above showing through it. does that make sense? it's confusing the hell outta me man

Several ways you can do this,

1) One way is to paint the alpha on the background:
A) swap the layer order, the background is now the top layer, texture is the bottom layer

B) paint on the top "background" layer, set the paint channel to alpha, and the foreground color to black. 100% black is "transparent", because you're painting the alpha channel . You can think of it as the paint strokes revealing the texture layer below

If you've already done some work with paint strokes, and want to salvage what you have instead of doing it all over, you might be able to - but you have to describe what you've done and how you've set it up more clearly . (e.g. if your paint strokes were white, you can invert them to black)


2) Another method is to use that white paint layer as a track matte, using a luma matte.

Background on bottom layer, Texture on middle layer, White paint layer on top layer. Set the middle texture layer to luma for the track matte

(The white paint layer has to be on a black background , so you can copy & paste your old strokes onto a black solid layer if the old strokes were originally on the texture layer)

[budwzr]

You need to parent/child the white with the top layer. Then composite as a single track. Parenting lets you specify the order and execution of track groupings.

It's the 4th dimension.