5.5

773Motion User Guide
Draw shapes, masks, and paint strokes
Intro to shapes, masks, and paint strokes in Motion
Shapes, masks, and paint strokes are vector-based layers that you create in Motion.
Shapes
Shapes are primarily used to create visual elements in a composition. You can use a single
shape as a background or color graphic in a composition, or you can create elaborate
illustrations that combine many shapes. Shapes work like any other layer. But unlike an
image or video clip that you import as a layer, a shape layer is created in Motion, either
by adding a premade shape from the Library or by drawing a custom shape in the canvas.
There are two categories of custom shapes: simple shapes drawn as a rectangle or ellipse,
and complex shapes drawn point by point as a Bezier or B-Spline shape. Each control point
in a complex shape defines some sort of corner or curve, and the actual spline that makes
up the shape connects these control points together like a connect-the-dots drawing.
To begin using shapes, see Intro to simple shapes and masks in Motion and Intro to
complex shapes and masks in Motion.
Masks
Masks are a special type of shape used to create regions of transparency in layers.
Although shapes work as layers by themselves, masks must be assigned to an image
layer to have an effect. For example, if you have a picture in which you want to isolate the
foreground subject, you can create a mask to cut out the background. As with shapes,
there are two categories of masks: simple masks drawn as a rectangle or ellipse, and
complex masks drawn point by point in the canvas as Bezier or B-Spline shapes.