AE: how to paint on a composition 'live'

Discussions about FX-Tree and Compositing generally
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Eugen
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Joined: 10 Jan 2010, 12:40
Location: Vienna/Austria
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AE: how to paint on a composition 'live'

Post by Eugen » 02 Apr 2014, 13:41

Hi,
this one is driving me nuts... I've googled around, and found others ask the same question for years...

I want to use the paint tool (paint effect) on a layer (e.g. a solid), but without having to open the layer!
Because if I do so, I only see the solid, but nothing else, and I want to paint precisely on some parts of the composition.
If I don't open the layer, I cannot paint but just move it.

I can open a second comp viewer side-by-side, lock the one with the main comp, open the solid in the other one, and paint in it, but that's much good either.
There's also the bug or restriction that the main comp will then not update until the mouse button is released, when using this 'edit this, look at that' workflow.

Can it be that AE is really that sucky???

Thanks a lot!
Eugen

Eugen
Posts: 331
Joined: 10 Jan 2010, 12:40
Location: Vienna/Austria
Contact:

Re: AE: how to paint on a composition 'live'

Post by Eugen » 02 Apr 2014, 14:10

Found it... here comes the trick:

You need to pre-comp all layers that you want to see during painting.
Then, right-click the new pre-comp, and click 'open layer' (NOT 'open composition', which is the same as double-clicking).
A new layer viewer is opened, where you can paint onto the pre-comp as a whole.

Now tell me this is intuitive... 'open layer' on a composition??
Adobe logic. Got my share of trouble with it at the moment.

Over and out
Eugen

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dwigfor
Posts: 395
Joined: 17 Nov 2009, 17:46

Re: AE: how to paint on a composition 'live'

Post by dwigfor » 20 Apr 2014, 15:28

Also try making a duplicate of your layers, precomp those, and then paint on that precomped layer. If you so desire, you can change it to transparent and turn off the layers inside the duplicate. Then you have your paint strokes on separate layer above other layers.

I think the reason you might have to work on a layer (requiring you to precomp your stuff), is for the time based (you can offset time) clone (stamp) tool.

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