[Dave Quirus]

i’m a bit confused with the setup above and how the alpha levels is being used to glue it all together.. i understand what the effect does, just not how it’s being implemented to mask out another effect. any clarification would be wonderful if you think it’ll be a solution.

thanks.

[Dave Quirus]

ahh, that’s interesting.. kind of a hybrid of both my adjustment layer and track matte setups. it definitely resolves keeping one less precomp left in the picture which is nice.. still running in to adjustment layer issues of affecting all layers below in regards to multiple lighting passes (i.e. a graded specular pass on top of a graded diffuse pass will double the grade, etc) but that can be taken care of with separate precomps (just not looking forward to that with the number of passes i’ll be running)..

i have to admit i’m surprised to see that this ability is still not available as a standard feature since it’s so commonly done in other packages and has been around for some time. i realize i haven’t touched AE since 6.5 but I suppose I just assumed this would have been implemented considering there’s floating point exr support now..

thanks for the suggestion Kevin.

[Dave Quirus]

Hey Chris,

Thanks for the response..

The only problem with 1. is that this method with adjustment layers, whether precomping and reordering or not, will become problematic when dealing with different lighting passes. For instance, let’s say i have a diffuse and specular pass. I need to add the specular pass on top of the diffuse but i want to color correct just the sphere of each of those passes individually. so basically i’d have to precomp the diffuse with all the set matte precomp craziness in there. then i’d have to precomp the specular with all the set matte precomp craziness as well. then finally have a main comp to add the diffuse and specular together. so basically 3 levels of precomping for something that should be very simple.. and not very easily color corrected while viewing one final comp. i mean, it’s very doable.. just a bit over the top.. 🙂

As far as the Remove Color Matting effect.. Is it safe to assume that this is a un-premult operation that’s going on? It appears that way. If so, is there a way to premult it back after we apply an un-premult. Either way, I’m still not crazy about the idea that one would have to composite the same object over itself just so the top copy can get graded..

Am I at least correct that AE still has no way of plugging in mattes to effects? For some reason I thought I had heard support for this finally but can’t seem to find it any where within the app.

Again, thanks for all your help.