🚀 go-pugleaf

You have run smack into the render pipeline. Spin down the properties and look at the order of the list. If you have a single layer with an animated mask, an effect, (with or without animated properties) and then a transformation, (anchor point, position, scale, rotation, opacity) it looks like it should work. AE works in the same order as the list. Masks are applied first, then effects, then transformations. It is easy to see why Echo would not effect changes in position, scale, rotation, or opacity, because Echo is applied before the transformations. But the mask is animated before Echo is applied it seems like the position of the mask should echo across the screen. It doesn�t. In fact, the mask has no effect and any change applied before Echo does not show up. Why is that? Before AE can do anything with the pixels in a layer, it has to look at them. Echo (or any effect that uses time in the calculation) takes the original pixels from the time specified in the effect settings, mixes the original pixels from the specified time with the pixels at the current time, and then proceeds down the render pipeline. The original pixels in your Photoshop layer do not change over time so every new frame created by Echo is the same as the original and you end up with no change. 

So how do you get around this problem? You pre-compose the Photoshop layer with all of it�s animation in place except time based effects. Now, the pixels in the pre-composed footage layer do change over time and Echo can use difference in its calculation. It is like trying to apply a mask to a text plug-in. The mask is applied, and then the text is applied, so the mask has no effect on the text. Pre-composing, once again, comes to the rescue. Most �gee AE isn�t doing what I think it should be doing� problems can be solved by pre-composing the layer or layers and their attributes.