Dylan Hargreaves
Forum Replies Created
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[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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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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Hi Matt,
Close enough, definitely. In fact it mirrors a test I did with some sample text just to see what would happen and FCP exported it with a solid black background.
Two weird things are happening.
– The very first attempt I did at this worked – I’ve just been unable to repeat it since.
– AE detects there is an unlabelled alpha channel and as usual asks me what to do with. But selecting straight unmatted, (or any of the other choices just to see), results in it still displaying as a solid black background.
Have I got a back end issue do you think?
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Darn. Gonna have to bite the bullet then and upgrade then!
There’s doubtless a way to achieve a similar effect in AE, but my skills in that dept are a little basic to say the least!
I thought I had a real easy way to fake it there for a minute. Oh well, upgrade here we come.
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ProRes 4444 – is that one of the new codecs with FCS3 cos I don’t seem to have that option?
I’ve not made the upgrade yet!
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Ok, here’s the workflow.
I’m working with one of Andrew Kramer’s flourishes from his Evolutions set. I’m starting in AE, manouvering the flourish in 3D space to give it a nice plain and exporting from AE as an animation with alpha.
I then put it into an animation timeline in FCP. Turn the background to checkerboard and sure enough, the background is transparent.
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!)
However, when I try and export from FCP (animation, mills of cols+) to take it back into AE to work with, FCP isn’t exporting the alpha channel.
AE asks on import what I would like to do with the alpha and none of the options result in a transparent BG.
QT properties detect the alpha as ‘none allow dithering’. Changing it to straight alpha results in no change to the clip.
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The sequence setting is animation. the graphic itself is one of Andrew Kramer’s flourishes from his Evolutions set. With 3D extrusion I’ve discovered you can make it look a lot like those nice ‘clay’ renders you see a lot of in 3D Max etc.
I’ll try a different sequence setting and see what happens.
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It’s an animation so I have to export as QT.
I tried exporting it again without rendering first but that just gave me a solid black
Norhing with no graphic at all. Weird.
I’ll give exporting as prores 444 a go tomorrow but something’s telling me that
Won’t work either… 🙁 -
Interesting. But it costs 20k and records at 35mbps. Could be a complete flop.
On another note, why are manufacturers designing these larger sensor cameras to look so… ugly?
It’s like hybrid cars – a great idea, but would you really want to be seen in one?
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I would say it’s different tools for different jobs.
There’s this obsession with DSLR’s which seems to be just about the shallow DoF, which has its uses and makes things look nice and arty, but you wouldn’t want to sit through an entire doc slathered in it.
There is nothing, repeat, nothing wrong with the picture you get from a video camera, whether it’s the HVX, the EX3 or whatever.
In a recent edit, we got the grade of the EX3 spot on, and it was virtually indistinguishable from the 5DmkII we used as a B cam.
Of course, in the low light bits of the shoot, the 5D came into its own in a way the EX3 just couldn’t, but as I say, it’s different tools for different jobs.