[Brian Jones]

You need to check off Alpha in the Render Settings

[Brian Jones]

[mitchino] “How do I get the reflection to gradually fade out the further it is from the object if you know what I mean?”

Not sure what you mean but also try gradient in the reflection channel or Fresnel in the reflection channel

[mitchino] “Also can I blur the reflection?”

Yes, turn Dispersion on in the Reflection channel. Start with small values.

[Brian Jones]

I don’t think an object buffer or an alpha – same thing really – will output without the object being visible to the camera. Not even Seen by Rays helps (which makes sense since an alpha is in relation to the camera not lights). So to get an alpha/object buffer you would have to
– select everything at once and apply a compositing tag and with all the tags still selected uncheck Seen by Camera. Then check it for the bits in the buffer.
-or turn everything off by hand (quicker with the SoloButton plugin).
It would just depend on if you need the shadows/reflections/etc from the non-rendering objects in your partial render assuming you only need the alpha mask I would go with turning the objects off.

Either way render with alpha turned on and use that or enable Multipass rendering and use only the Object Buffer channel if you went with the object buffer method.

[Brian Jones]

I saw the object (if it is an object) but the rest of the interface gave me no clue as to what it might be (or be related to). So next step is to look at the scene. Or maybe someone else has seen something like this?

[Brian Jones]

I’m not seeing the problem based on the screen grab (anybody?). Can you post the scene?

[Brian Jones]

If you put a hierarchical (null with children usually) object in the extrude it needs Hierarchical checked to work. Try putting just a single spline into the Extrude.

[Brian Jones]

should work (it does here). Check this out. It has a jpg’s for color and alpha but I know it works with color and alpha in a psd too.

https://homepage.mac.com/bdjones/.public/selectionMats.zip

[Brian Jones]

Structure/Weight Hypernurbs. It’s not interactive like .-drag you have to set a value then apply but it does the same thing.

[Brian Jones]

select another tool. If you’re thinking ‘how do I get back to the Selection tool’ just select the Select Tooll or (better) just hit the space bar which toggles back and forth from the section tool and whatever was selected last.

[Brian Jones]

Thanks to you all, glad to be here!