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cheerfulskeptic
06-10-2005, 11:15 AM
Hello,
I have several scenes I wantto composite to form a complete animation. All scenes are to be rendered in 3ds max 7 as TGA file sequences and have IFL's

All shots have the same camera movement
1) background animation (hills, trees, etc.)
2) spaceship taking off from a land-based dock
3) Mechs patrolling the launch perimeter
4) ground crew jogging, repairing, etc.
5) other miscellaneous objects in the spacedock like cranes, etc.

My question is, how do I render these scenes with their respective alphas so I can get a nice composite.

1) background anim is rendered by itself
2) how should i render the spaceship in 3ds max? ie, what backgrund should i use so I can use either AE or Combustion
3) same with the other scenes mentioned above.
Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks!
MystikGotan
06-10-2005, 02:10 PM
Hello,

you want to save them as an RPF file (Rich Pixel Format), then import them into Combustion, it's all very easy.
Hugh
06-10-2005, 02:36 PM
When rendering scenes with alphas, the background colour should always be black.
Wizdoc
06-12-2005, 01:47 AM
Max automatically interprets "empty" background as transparent for alpha channel, so all you got to do is render and save with a proper format that supports alpha channel (TGA works fine). You can even have background images, they don't mess up the alpha.

So just render all your passes separately and put them together in AE, they'll look just fine. Mattes and alphas are not generally something you need scratch your head about when dealing with full 3D shots.
pearl3d
06-12-2005, 01:53 PM
i have a similar problem...i am exporting TGA, i tried and quicktime PNG from 3d max and it doesnt work...i have a scene with black background and some objects animation

i am using adobe premiere...do u think its that the problem ?
VFX Follower
06-18-2005, 04:56 PM
Check out this post and it should help you.

http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=248795

Just keep in mind that if your sequences are long, you might have to just stick with image sequences that support alpha channels. Premiere can composite a little bit, but if you are rendering several passes/layers and are wanting to re-compose them with additional effects, I would highly recommend you get a compositing program like Adobe After Effects or Autodesk Combusiton.

Good luck,

JB...
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