Rendered Object with no (transparent) background

[womil]

Hi A:M users and specialists,

 

I 've converted a logo from 2D to 3D by A:M and made it rotating. Now I wanted to render this rotating logo with "transparent" background. Is it possible by A:M to create an object surrounded by "transparency"?

 

I hope it will be clear what is my problem.

 

Thank You in advance for any help.

 

Regards,

Womil

[Caroline]

You can render to a tga sequence with alpha on:

 

 

That alpha channel saved with the tga defines the transparency.

 

All active objects will be rendered, but the sky colour (by default blue) will be transparent.

 

Inside this zip file is a very small tga of Thom rendered out in a default chor, with ground deleted.

render000.zip

 

If you take it into Photoshop, you can see the alpha selection, or Photoshop Elements, where you can "load selection".

[womil]

Dear Caroline,

 

thanks for Your fast reply.

 

I did now like You told me. I removed the ground and in the camera view only the object to render and the sky were to see.

The resulting tga-file showed black background, but no transparency.

 

By the way, my A:M version is 10.5r.

 

Regards,

Wolfgang

[Xtaz]

Wolfgang ... render to PNG sequence ... and turn ALPHA ON in the buffers ...simple and fast

[womil]

Hi XTaz,

thank You for the suggestion. But for me it is not clear: Which program can I use to render to png-Format? Is it possible in Animation Master?

At the moment I'm lost. I've uploaded a quicktime movie of my object.

 

Regards,

Wolfgang

FG_Logo_6.mov

[Xtaz]

I haven't my A:M here but let's see if I remember.... When you render to file ... the first option in the popup window is the FORMAT, you must expand it and choose one ( AVI / MOV / TGA / JPG / PNG ), the last OPTION is BUFFER, you must expand it and turn ON the ALPHA option ...

[NancyGormezano]

The resulting tga-file showed black background, but no transparency.

 

By the way, my A:M version is 10.5r.

 

The black background is the transparency

 

PNG may not be an option in 10.5

 

It is an option in ver 15 (and some of previous versions)

[John Bigboote]

What program are you going to use to see the transparency? Photoshop? AfterEffects?

 

If you render to targa, the transparency will be in the alpha channel. PNG is new to V15. Let us know what road you want to go down and we'll get you there...

[womil]

Hello,

 

after rendering the rotating logo I want make it show up in a presentation as a video clip as well as an animated gif. It is important that the background of the presentation can be seen behind the rotating object. At the moment I have rendered tga-files with alpha channel "on", I have rendered an avi-file with alpha channel "on". But now I am at a stop. How can I create a video clip (and/or animated gif) of my rotating object which can be put on top of a presentation background (e.g. power point presentation)?

 

In the last week of September our group is organizing a congress about solid state chemistry. The logo will be the congress logo.

 

Regards,

Wolfgang

[Caroline]

Is this what you want?

 

to render a movie of a rotating logo that you can then put on top of anything, and it will be transparent around the edges?

 

I don't know of any movie format that will do that.

 

In A:M you can take a tga sequence with an alpha, like in that Thom image I posted earlier, and overlay it onto any other background, like a mov, or a choreography (using layers). Then render the movie.

 

This will be a movie rendered with a background of your choice, but it will not be able to be a transparent background. You would have to rerender the movie each time you want a different background. You would only have to render the image sequence of Thom once, but the movie would have to have a background.

 

I will try and post a movie of what I mean, as I have explained it badly here.

 

Edit: I just realised you could mean a transparent animated gif. I will have to think some more......

[Caroline]

Tricky.

 

eugene.zip

 

This is a transparent animated gif, but the animation is too slow, and I could not work out how to get it faster - I'm sure you could

 

You can't do this in A:M alone, as A:M does not render to gif.

 

I rendered Eugene to a tga sequence with alpha on, as explained above with the Thom tga. Then I converted the tga sequence to a transparent gif sequence using a trial version of AhaView. Then I dropped the gif sequence into UnFREEz, which created this gif.

 

I tested it in Powerpoint, and it is transparent there.

 

I believe ImageReady will do this a lot more easily if you have it, and I am absolutely sure there are other free conversion programs out there that I have not found.

 

So the key is to render to tga sequence with alpha, and then convert in another program to gif.

 

Hope that helps

[Rodney]

The problem you are sure to run into with many converters is that they will strip the Alpha Channel out of the image as it gets converted to GIF format. That makes it pretty useless for your purpose.

 

One way around this problem with many conversion utilities is to make the background a particular color not elsewhere in the image (say hot pink) and tell the utility to make that the 'transparent' color. When you save the GIF animation out then everything pink will be transparent.

 

A:M by itself will not render to GIF format so another utility is required.

There are quite a few freeware and reasonably priced applications that'll get the job done.

 

You might also consider using the PNG format.

That has gained a lot in popularity.

You can render PNGs with transparency directly out of A:M. You can only render still images/frames only so once again you'll need another utility to smash them together.

 

(If we can render to animated PNG someone please correct me. I've never made the attempt.)

 

 

Doh! Caroline... you snuck a post in on me during my reply. You are fast and thorough!

[Caroline]

Doh! Caroline

 

I had difficulty finding a gif converter that recognised the tga alpha, except for that one I mentioned, and that one did not seem to want to animate, but I did not spend a lot of time on that part of it.

 

I did not manage to render a transparent png. There did not seem to be an option in A:M to do that - do you know how, Rodney?

[Rodney]

I did not manage to render a transparent png. There did not seem to be an option in A:M to do that - do you know how, Rodney?

 

Xtas (Marcos) mentioned PNG before. A:M definitely renders PNG with transparency... if... and only if you turn on the Alpha Channel buffer in the Render Panel.

 

I've never seen a utility that will convert PNGs with transparency into animated PNGs with transparency.

I'm sure there is one out there somewhere... just haven't seen one yet.

 

Sorry... no screen shot of the Render panel here. I tested on another computer not connected to the internet.

This one is about to get an A:M subscription.

[Caroline]

Yes, sorry Rodney - I uninstalled WebRender today, and it messed up some A:M setting, and corrupted my render output screen I thought I was dead in the water there, but the forum search saved me. What a fab forum this is

 

Just to confirm, the png transparency is the same as the tga transparency, change Alpha to ON.

[womil]

Hi,

 

thanks a lot all of You for Your help. Now I was successful in creating an animated gif file which shows transparency. I have to play around with the settings for the gif but it is more or less what I wanted to see. I will upload a test gif as soon as I think its good enough to show to You.

 

Thank You all,

 

Wolfgang