Multiple masks

What is the best way to have two or more noncontinous masks on the same footage?

Just add two masks in line with each other and animate them away when you don't need them or - if they're static - blend them in/out depending on your needs.

For anyone reading this who might one day do roto for someone else--don't toss the masks out of frame immediately. Turn the Level to 0 on the frame before, then get rid of them (if the spline is in your way). Otherwise we wind up with problems when we turn on motion blur. If setting the Level to 0 punches a hole in the rest of the matte, change the Paint Mode to Add or Maximum, depending on which gives you a better edge at the intersections.

Even if you set the Level to 0.0, the DoD will still be expanded to include the mask. If you animate the PaintMode to Ignore, however, the DoD will be unaffected.

To be clear, that would mean animating the Paint Mode and leaving the Level control alone. That's a much better method; thanks!

Annoyingly, this only works if you have another mask as an input. So you need a Rect or Bmp as the "BG" you composite your other masks onto.

One point of clarification, I am quite new to Fusion, so my apologies for asking for further input.

When I tie mask1 to mask2 and then my video, and then try to invert the masks, I can get either one mask to invert, or neither, but not both. Can't seem to get both masks to invert at the same time. For my work, I would like to have about six masks in the same video, so any advice as to how to get them all working together (simultaneous invert) would be appreciated.

Add a Bitmap node at the end of the chain and invert that. As a mask tool with two inputs, it's also useful for tying together two stacks of masks—if you have a stack that's acting as a foreground holdout for another stack, for instance.

That did the trick, many thanks. Still on the learning curve from layer to node type of work flow.