Re: how to work with multiple masks

Not knowing exactly what you're trying to achieve makes it hard to recommend "the best" solution, but here's what comes to mind: create your masks using animated shapes on individual shape layers. You can then duplicate each layer (to keep the originals untouched) and use them as track mattes for your images. You can either combine the mattes in one precomp and then use as track matte or use them individually with the image layers (if it's just one image layer you can duplicate and pair the duplicates up with each matte/shape layer). If you want to re use the mattes, you can duplicate the original shape layers, slide them down in the place where you need the new animation to start and combine them at will.

Tudor "Ted" Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist