• Maxon Cinema 4D

  NO ALPHA outputting in Cinema 4D

  Posted by David Hooper on December 1, 2009 at 7:23 am

  I have read a number of folks having problems with this and strangely enough…I can’t seem to find an answer. It’s really simple (seemingly) 🙂

  I create a sphere with a basic material, give it a 30 frame movement just to have some frames to output, I make a “preview movie” with Animation settings of millions +(the alpha). I set it for a Quicktime movie and I set the check box to include the alpha and render.

  No matter what program I import it into, Nuke, AE, etc…there is no Alpha. I am primarily using Nuke, so any help with that workflow would be great.

  I have checked and double-checked all settings. I have tried even the “straight alpha” setting. I tried adjusting the alpha settings on the object itself.

  I noticed one interesting thing: I output a PNG still image just to see if my Cinema was capable of producing an alpha!! It did bring the sphere still into Nuke with an alpha…but…in the preview window “depth” settings, it just read “RGB” and some forums mentioned it should have an “RGBA.”

  Any suggestions or “hey check these basic settings” would be just awesome!
  

  Thanks from grinline.com

  Adam Trachtenberg replied 16 years, 9 months ago 2 Members · 5 Replies
• 5 Replies

• 

  Adam Trachtenberg

  December 1, 2009 at 5:58 pm

  You should render to picture viewer instead of using “make preview”.
• 

  David Hooper

  December 1, 2009 at 6:01 pm

  Can I output a “sequence” from picture viewer? I can get one picture to output properly…but I need the animations to keep the alpha.

  I’ll play around with that though….thanks for the info.

  Thanks from grinline.com
• 

  Adam Trachtenberg

  December 1, 2009 at 9:12 pm

  Yes, you should always use the picture viewer for final renders. Just make sure you set the frame range to “all frames” in the Output tab.
• 

  David Hooper

  December 2, 2009 at 5:43 am

  Thanks Adam…I did get it working using exactly what you suggested.

  Last question on all this: It seems that the PNG’s render the alpha because I can set them to 16 bit. Maybe not for that reason, but I couldn’t find a way at ALL to get a Quicktime mov file to output with an alpha even going through the picture viewer. I noticed all the QT codec options are 8 bit. Is that the problem…or more specific: can you render a QT movie file from picture viewer with an alpha? I’m happy enough getting a stack of PNG files that look great!…but it seems like others are able to get a consolidated, single mov file with an alpha.

  Thanks again for the help…man this has been nice to finally figure out 🙂

  Thanks from grinline.com
• 

  Adam Trachtenberg

  December 2, 2009 at 2:54 pm

  You should get a QT alpha if you set it to Animation codec with millions+ colors.

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