hi, sorry for my english i’m french so i will try to be understandable 
so i did an small animation with a cycle. and i want to put a tone effect. but for this effect i need a mask (or a matte, i think it’s the same but i’m not sure) but i’m on animate pro and i can’t find how to make a mask and how use it.
so i need your help
you need to add a new layer called mask.
Then you drag the drawing onto the mask.
Then make a drawing the mask (where you want to mask) and drag that onto the mask part of the effect.
Have a look at the elearning tips and tricks on the toonboom site, they have a masking example there in more detail.
thank you for your answer i have found how use mask but i don’t understand how can i apply the tone effect on all the cycle, i want to know if the mask could follow my walk cycle? do i have to put a tone effect on each part of the puppet or can i make only one tone effect for all the puppet ? i hope my question is clear,
You have a number of options
1. You can animate the mask. To this this i like to drag the mask layer out (so i can see it) and then animate it and put it back into the mask effect.
2. You can use a texture instead of a mask for the parts you want to see thru. Just set the alpha on the texture so it is transparent. This is by far easier than using one.
What exactly are you trying to do (like just say what your doing in your project and I might be able to give more exact advice)?
I am thinking drawing substitions would be another option for you. So you would have 1 drawing of the standard leg and 1 drawing of the leg with the sections you don’t want to see deleted. Then you flick between them as much as you want.
thanks for your answer so i try to explain what i whant to do:)
i have a walk cycle animate with IK and drawing substitution. and i want to use the tone effect for add a shadow on my character. but i try to put the mask (with the tone effect) to the walkcycle but that don’t work very well. so do i have to animate the mask frame by frame or can i order it to follow the walk cycle?
I get what you mean now
However I couldn’t get tone to animate correctly in a hierarcy which makes it fairly useless for a character. It was easy to use tone on a single a object and animate that.
When I tried to put it in a hierarchy only the first element plus the mask of the next element in the chain would animate which clearly wouldn’t be good for animating a character.
I don’t know if tone is designed/able to be used in this situation. I am sure Lily will be able to tell if it is indeed possible but I couldn’t get it working with some quick tests.
However
http://www.toonboom.com/products/toonBoomStudio/eLearning/tipsTricks/lighting-effects.php
offers a short tutorial on another method (which although a studio tutorial can be applied to animate) which may help.
hi,
another simple (if limited) way to do it:
use the actual character for the matte.
connect your character to a peg transformation node and a new peg to the offset input (left one) for position information. then route from the peg transformation to the tone effect. so you have both inputs of the tone node fed from your character, but one is slightly offset using the new peg.
with the new peg you can position the effect on your character the way you want.
this way you dont need to create anything in addition to your character, only another peg. of course this is somewhat limited, but depending on your goal…maybe it will do. 8)
thanks both of you, but i don’t really understand what do you want me to try because you can’t connect a peg to a tone effect i think? you can only connect drawing? and i have my walk cycle connect to a peg master for animate my character to cross the screen (i hope you understand me my english is horrible )
thats why i talked about using the peg transformation node :)<br />there you connect the peg.<br /><br />character -> tone effect right input<br />character -> peg transformation right input -> tone effect left input<br />new peg -> peg transformation left input<br /><br />this means the character gets apllied the tone effect AND it is at the same time the mask for the tone effect, BUT offset using the new peg :)<br /><br />by moving the peg connected to the left input of the pegtransformation node you can adjust the position of the tone effect on your character.<br /><br />if its still unclear i will make a screenshot of the network on monday. (don`t have the program installed at home right now)
good luck
I’ve attached below a screenshot of one way to set up the network to get this accomplished. You would have to have a separate tone module for each drawing layer - though you can copy and paste this module. Then just connect the module with a new drawing mask for each layer as well. When you connect these in your hierarchy, they will animate along with your animation.
However, this being said, you don’t necessarily always want the tone to animate with the character. If the character is moving out of the light, you will have to animate your masks appropriately.
Hope this helps.
~Lilly
Toon Boom Support
http://i790.photobucket.com/albums/yy184/lillybirdsong/ShadowNetworkScreenshot.png
that makes me wish i had the pro version lol