Welcome to Flanimate Power Tools Q&A, where you can ask questions and receive answers from other members of the EDAP Tools community!

How do eye masks work?

Hello,

I was watching the EDAPT tutorial on how to rig the eyes on a puppet, and I still don't understand how the pupil is made invisible when the eyes are closed. How does the mask differentiate between the outline/eyelid and the eye white, when the mask is just a copy of the same symbol? I thought that the pupil will be visible wherever there is content inside the symbol.

I hope I phrased this in a way that makes sense.
asked Aug 28, 2024 by anonymous

1 Answer

Only the bottom layer in a symbol actually works as a mask.
We separate the eye white and the outline and put the eye white at the bottom, which is then used as the mask.
Specifically for the closed eye frame (the blink) the opaque lid is put on the outline layer, while the mask is a fully transparent little circle which is offset enough to not intersect with the iris/pupil. This makes the iris disappear.

Download some of the sample rigs to see how this is done in practice.

Also, look at this article which discusses more masking methods and provides another sample file:
https://flash-powertools.com/masking-the-irises-in-flash/

answered Aug 28, 2024 by nick
Hi~
so about this
in another face of your face rig video, there was a nice trick where the entire face features (eyebrows/eyes: pupuls and eyeball/nose/mouth) are under a mask of the headshape- that helps with natural head movement : example from a view of face front to side profile view, then they are tweened naturally so that the facial features move from one end to the other side and parts of the face move out the mask making them invisible/ giving an effect of moving out of view with the moving head angle.
that is cool!

but then what I come across is that i have to choose ONE masking system :
either eyewhite + pupil mentioned mentioned here
or Headshape +all face features

is there a some way I'm missing to integrate both - doing a mask in mask?
Hello Hawri,

Unfortunately, Flash/Animate do not allow to create a hierarchy of masks on the same timeline.

If you want to have masks for the eyes, you will need to have the facial mask applied outside of the head. Or if internal facial mask is more important, you can approach the eyes differently and have their masks nested within the eye symbol.

These, of course, are compromises and not ideal, but this limitation has been present in Flash since the very beginning.
Oh well I expected it to be something like that when i found no one doing it ^^; it is what it is

thanx :D
...