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Repost: FCP alpha issue persisting
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Shane is probably your man for that sort of question. I’m not sure what time it is in California though. Have you tried the usual preference trashing and so on? If you haven’t got it preference manager is a useful free download.
Good luck, Matt. -
Thanks guys
Matt – Preference trashing was going to be the next step unless another solution presented itself. It hasn’t, so here goes!
Raf – the sequence was set to animation too!
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[Dylan Hargreaves] “When I add extrude with the face set to gradient and the black switched off, it gives a very nice 3D effect similar in look to the ‘clay’ renders you see in 3D max. (If there’s a way to achieve this same look in AE, I don’t know how to do it!)”
In AE, have you tried playing with the ‘Bevel Alpha’ effect? You can find it inside the ‘Perspective’ folder in the ‘Effects’ menu.
Gary
This is me – this is what I do – https://web.mac.com/garymmw
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[Rafael Amador] “You need to set your sequence codec Animation Millions+ too.”
Not so. I haven’t done this in years but I just tried it. I exported out of FCP with an alpha. You can do it from whatever timeline you want..so long as you are doing export using quicktime conversion. And if I had to make a guess as to why yours wasn’t working, it’s because you were rendering before you exported. If you want to maintain the alpha, you can’t render it before you export. You have to export it from the timeline un-rendered. If you render before you export, the problem is that the codec that you’re in doesn’t support alpha channels.
-mattyc -
[Matt Callac] “If you want to maintain the alpha, you can’t render it before you export. You have to export it from the timeline un-rendered. If you render before you export, the problem is that the codec that you’re in doesn’t support alpha channels.”
Now this I tried and the result was a completely blank clip. No graphic, nothing. This is looking like a glitch I think. Time to trash those prefs.
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[Dylan Hargreaves] “The clip then imports into AE on a solid black background – despite AE asking how it should treat the unlabelled alpha channel – I’ve attempted all 3 options just to be sure and they all have the same result. I import it back into FCP and, yup, it’s on a solid background.”
Two thoughts on the AE portion of this:
- The default background color of any comp is black. Toggle the transparency grid (see image below) to see the comp without the background color on.
- AE renders to “Lossless” (RGB Animation, “Millions of Colors”) by default. To render with alpha, you must choose “Lossless with Alpha” (RGBA Animation, “Millions of Colors+”) or similar in the render queue.
Toggle Transparency Grid:
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
Hi everyone. I’ve trashed preferences and although this seems to have fixed the alpha issue in most cases, it’s still persists in the original extrusion issue.
But I think I have this figured out, and just my luck I appear to have stumbled on one of those FCP idiosyncrasies that basically boils down to: ‘screw you, you can’t do that thing you were trying to do.’
The issue is with the gradient edge I’m trying to apply to the extrusion. I wanted it just on a gray scale, darkening towards the bottom edge but not going to 100% black.
However, anything less than 50% black and FCP can’t determine where the alpha channel should go. At 50% and up, the extrusion exports just fine with the alpha channel in place.
What this means is I can’t fake up the nice 3DMax style ‘clay’ render which was the effect I was getting all excited about. Boo hiss as they say.
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Just to add one trick to all this. I found that when I need to export with alpha, you can temporarily change your sequence settings to pro res 444 (or animation+) which will untended everything of course. Then you can export at current settings and get the alpha. It’s more convenient in some situations. For example you just want to trim off the ends of an animation and add audio. If the animation is in pro res 444 then there would be no decompression.
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[Matt Callac] “Not so. I haven’t done this in years but I just tried it. I exported out of FCP with an alpha. You can do it from whatever timeline you want..so long as you are doing export using quicktime conversion. And if I had to make a guess as to why yours wasn’t working, it’s because you were rendering before you exported.”
I can get Alpha on export from FC or with QT Conversion, rendered or un-rendered, as long as y keep on a codec with Alpha.
This issue has been brought here many times. I’m unable to reproduce it. I always get Alpha.
rafael -
Oh- and when you’re done exporting, hit undo a few times to get your sequence settings back and your renders back.
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