5 Creative MASKING EFFECTS You Need to Know in DaVinci Resolve

Jul. 2

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5 Creative MASKING EFFECTS You Need to Know in DaVinci Resolve - In this video editing tutorial you're going to learn 5 creative MASKING EFFECTS in DaVinci Resolve Free and Studio version! Using both manual masking and magic mask, these are 5 techniques you'll want to know!

In this video, you're going to learn five creative masking techniques so that you can do things like change the background, add reflections, hide objects, transition to a new scene, and put text behind things.

On a side note, I am super pumped to share that the biggest DaVinci Resolve event of the year, Resolve Con, is happening this August 21st through to the 25th, and we are going to be one of the teachers. Not only is it going to be super fun, but you have the chance to learn from the best of the best. I'm super excited about it. To find out more and sign up, you can check out the link below.

Alright, now let's get to these masking techniques.

This is Will's eye. He's got, I think it's called heterochromia. It's basically those darker lines in his eye. I just think it's so cool. Anyway, okay, so we're going to mask this computer coding screen over his iris so it looks like a reflection. We, in the edit page, let's put the coding clip over top of the eyeball. In our inspector, under composite, decrease the opacity to around 45, so we can see the eye under it. Pop into the color page and open up our power window. Grab our pen tool and click on the edge of our eye to put our first anchor point. Before you let go, drag your cursor to make a curve in this line so it follows the shape of the iris. As you add more points, you can click on them and move them around as you need to and connect to the first point here.

Great. Since we only want to see this reflection inside the iris, we want to remove the coding screen outside of it. To do this, right-click in the node graph and choose Add Alpha Output, which shows this little blue thingy. Connect the blue to the blue, and there we go. Let's turn off this border by clicking this drop-down menu and choosing Off. Now we can see how prominent this edge currently is. That's no problem because we can adjust the softness of the edge. I think around six is looking good and more realistic.

Now let's go to our tracker panel, and usually, I like auto-tracking, but in this case, it's not going to work so well. Yeah, and as you can see, auto-tracking just didn't do the trick. We are going to manually track this. Let's go to frame, so we can manually adjust this mask by frame. Drag our playhead to the spot where the mask does sit well over the iris, and now let's bring it a little bit before this where it starts to get a bit wonky. We can click right on the mask and drag it up into a good placement, and doing this automatically creates a keyframe to hold the mask in that position on that particular frame. Move backwards until we see it come off of the iris again and drag it back on, which creates another keyframe to hold that position. Okay, and now as we get to the part where the eyelid begins to close, we're going to have to change the shape of our mask. So, continue scrubbing your cursor to the point where the eyelid covers the mask more and adjust it as needed. Right at the beginning here, since the eye is closed, let's not worry about adjusting this last frame of the mask and instead go back to our edit page. Scrub over to the part right before the eye opens, and we can just drag our coding clip to begin at that part. Let's check this out. That looks great.

Next, I'm going to show you one of my favorite—it's not my most favorite, but it's my second most favorite—masking technique, and that is how to create a masking transition. This can just really elevate the vibe of your video and take you from one clip or one scene to the next. Let's check it out. We're going to use this clip of this person walking across the frame and mask out the city behind them to reveal a nature scene. Let's put the walking clip above our nature scene, and with it selected, pop into the color page. In our power window, select the pen tool, and just before the back leg starts to reveal the background, let's draw a mask around this entire frame. Go to the tracker panel, choose frame, and click on this keyframe icon to place your first keyframe to hold the shape and position of your mask. Now move over one frame to the right and move our mask anchor points to match with this edge of the leg here. Add extra keyframes as needed to be precise in following the edge, and remember you can grab these here to adjust the curve of your mask. Move another frame to the right and click on my mask to move the whole thing over a bit, and then adjust the mask as you need to follow the edge of this leg. Let's make our nature scene underneath this clip visible. In our node graph, right-click, choose Add Alpha Output, and connect the blue to the blue. Nice. Okay, going to just turn off this power window border for a sec, and yeah, the edge is quite sharp and doesn't look natural. So, in our power window, let's increase the softness a bit to around 80. Turn our mask border back on, go to our tracker panel, and continue adjusting our mask frame by frame. I'm going to speed up this part of the video because you get the idea, and this can be a tedious process, but it does produce pretty cool results. As we get to the end here, where this leg is now about to go all the way off-screen, we can drag the mask off-screen too. Let's check this out. Awesome.

Alright, so now you have a good idea of what you can do with manual masking. Next, we're going to take a look at using Magic Mask. This tool alone is one of the main reasons I decided to make the switch to Studio. Let's check out how to put text behind a moving object using Magic Mask. We're in the color page, and I want to put the word "desert" behind some of these rocks here. So, let's get it done by opening Magic Mask and choosing Object. Grab our plus qualifier and scribble over these rocks. Track back and forth. Okay, and now let's turn on our mask overlay to see which part of our clip has been tracked. Oh brother, the overlay happens to be red, and these rocks are like orangish-red, so it's actually kind of hard to see in this case. Okay, so in our node graph, right-click and choose Add Alpha Output. Connect the blue to the blue and turn the overlay toggle off, and we can see that Magic Mask also selected some of this big rock here. I don't want it to be included in our mask, so I'm going to click on this icon to take us to the reference frame. Grab the minus qualifier tool and scribble over it to remove it from our selection. Now let's choose Better, which will do a better job but also will slow down your computer. Okay, and I want to clean up these edges here, so let's adjust Clean Black, Clean White, and the Blur Radius until it's looking good. Bring it back to fit view. Okay, nice. Going to track again. Now pop back into our edit page and hold Alt/Option down on your keyboard and drag your clip up to create a duplicate. And on a side note, if you want to be able to easily spot duplicates on your timeline, go up to View and turn on Show Duplicate Frames. I'll uncheck it for a sec so you can see what it looks like without. Okay, going to recheck. Cool. Anyway, we want our bottom original clip to completely show because we're going to use the duplicate that we masked over top of our text, so we've got to remove the masking effect from this bottom clip. Let's right-click on it, choose Remove Attributes, and checkmark Color Correction. Apply, and there we go. Now that original clip has no mask on it. When I disable it, you can see the duplicate is the masked copy. Enable the original again. Now open up Effects and search for Text. Drag your text onto the V2 track and increase the duration of it to match your clip. Select the text and open Inspector. Write in caps because that just looks better for one-word situations like this, and change the wording to say "desert." Increase the size so you can still read it but also so it's sort of framed and a bit covered by the rocks. Wait a minute. Okay, yep, and I definitely must have dessert on the mind because I spelled it wrong. Desert has one S, so let's just change that. Okay, I'm also just going to change the font style. I like Impact font. Okay, and let's check this out. It's looking good except I want the font position to remain in the center of this opening as the clip plays through, so with our playhead at the beginning of the text, go to the settings and click on the positions keyframe to hold that position in place. Go to the end of the clip and now adjust the X and Y axis of the position of your text to where you're happy with it. Okay, now let's check this out.

That's how you put text behind objects. Out of all the masking techniques I'm showing you, this one's probably my favorite, and it's something I just don't think you could easily do without Magic Mask. So, we have this chick walking, and I'd like the background to change with every step she takes. Let's duplicate this clip, turn off the visibility of the original track, and lock it just so it stays put for this technique. Pop into Fusion. On your keyboard, hit Shift and the spacebar to bring up your tools, and type Magic Mask and add. Okay, with our stroke mode set to Add, draw over your person, and now we have this lady isolated from the background. Choose Better. Track. Go back to the edit page and turn the original clip's visibility back on. Unlock, and like I said, with every step she takes, I want her to step into a new place. So, for her first step, we'll leave the original background showing. Let's drag the second background choice here, and I'm just going to trim the beginning a bit because I want her feet to start off together. Okay, and as we play through the second clip, notice that the direction it moves in is opposite to her. So, right-click on that background clip, change clip speed, and checkmark reverse speed. Change. Okay, great. And I also find her slow-mo walking too slow-mo, so let's right-click on her clip, choose change clip speed, and increase the speed to 200%. Do the same thing with the original. Okay, that's looking better. Now drag the third background under, and I'll cut this background clip after she steps. Bring the speed clip in, and it's static, so we're going to fake some movement by zooming in a bit, and then at the beginning of this clip, adjusting the X axis to the left, adding a keyframe, and close to the end of it, adjusting the X axis to the right. Awesome. Let's see how it looks. Alright, I think that technique's super cool. What do you think? Let me know in the comments below.

Now let's look at a technique that's very helpful if you need to remove something distracting in the background. In this clip, I find this light here a tiny bit distracting, and I'd like to just hide it. To do this, with our clip selected, hold Alt/Option down on your keyboard and drag up to create a duplicate. Let's enable the clip on the V1 track so it doesn't show. Go into our color page, and I already have a node that has some color corrections on it, so let's create a second node by holding down Alt/Option and S on your keyboard. Okay, go to our power window, grab our pen tool, let's zoom into this clip here and draw a mask around this light for sizing purposes. Okay, now click on the mask and drag it down to a part of the wall that we'd like to sort of cut and paste and use to cover that light. Right-click and add an alpha output. Connect the blue to the blue, and now we have our masked part of the wall. Let's just soften the edges of it a bit so it blends more. Go back to our edit page and turn the V1 track back on. With our mask on the V2 track selected, in our inspector, drag the position's Y axis down until your mask covers the light. Nice. Go back to the color page, tracker panel, and track left and right. Let's check this out. Awesome.

There you go. Those are five different creative masking techniques that you can use to enhance and pimp out the look of your videos. Oh, and if you want to know our favorite drive that we edit all of our video projects off of because it's super fast, it's small, and it's just so convenient, or if you want to know any of the gear that we recommend and use, check out the description below. A great video to watch next would be how to export alpha channels in DaVinci Resolve so that you can export something without the background. Personally, I think every editor should know how to export alpha channels, so check that out. I hope you have a lovely day. Thank you for watching this one, and we will see you in the next video.

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Alli and Will https://alliandwill.com

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