From the course: After Effects CC 2021 Essential Training: VFX

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Create a track matte

Create a track matte - After Effects Tutorial

From the course: After Effects CC 2021 Essential Training: VFX

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Create a track matte

- [Instructor] After Effects allows you to reference another layer's transparency or pixel brightness to control what is visible. A layer that controls another layer's visibility in this way is called a track matte, and we'll examine some of that here in this movie. So, here in this example, I've got a text layer that has its own built-in transparency. Everything inside the letters is opaque, everything outside is transparent. On top of that I have a gradient, which has transparency as well. If I scale this down you see that everything outside the box is transparent, everything inside is opaque. So we can use this information to create what's called a track matte. Track mattes work in pairs, the layer that's going to be doing the borrowing of information, the borrowing of transparency or pixel brightness information is on the bottom, and the layer that is providing that information is on top, and that's the track…

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