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rob rhodes
07-02-2008, 03:33 PM
Bit of an After Effects question but c4d related so hopefully someone can help. I am tring to sort my workflow out between cinema and AE and have found this tutorial http://www.studiodaily.com/studiomonthly/tutorials/howtutorials/6890.html

This seems to cover everything I would want to do but I have 2 problems. Firstly I can't seem to place an object (just a small 100px coloured square for now) on my light in AE so it takes its 3D coordinates. I have draged the square into the comp and turned it into a 3D layer but it just goes to the centre of the space and then it wont budge unless i pull it and place it manually with its xyz handles in 3D space which defeats the object. So my question is could somebody tell me the step by step way to place an imported object/image on a light in AE?

My second question is more a straight question about luma masks and how they work as they seem to have no effect for me. I drag an object buffer pass out of the special passes folder and into the comp and then set it to track matte - luma matte. Then what....?! how do I get it to cut out an object that intersects with it? Does it work in 3D so it knows if an object is infront or behind it?

Many thanks for any help anyone can give me.

Cheers
mikeh64
07-02-2008, 03:54 PM
that tutorial is out of date (by years)

C4D now has a tag called a "external compositing tag" that does a much better job of sending info to AE
rob rhodes
07-02-2008, 04:34 PM
Thanks mike. However i still can't place something on the imported objects coordinates, but it's good that i don't need to use lights anymore.
LucentDreams
07-02-2008, 07:10 PM
child it or replace footage.
AAAron
07-02-2008, 09:21 PM
Like Kai said in AFX:

Make the new colored solid 100x100px (it will show up in the project bin)

Duplicate the light (if you want to keep the light that is, otherwise it will be replaced)

Select (one of) the light(s) in the comp and drag the solid from the project bin on to the selected light
while holding down ALT.


or

just look at the lights coordinates and copy them on to the solids coordinates. (I assume you know that if you flip the little triangle on a layer you get access to is coords, scale, rotation etc.)


Luma matte and track matte works like this:

toplayer "the mask" (got an alpha you want to use or is in black and white)
bottomlayer "the content" on this layer you check alpha matte, to use the top layers alpha or luma matte, to use the top layers luma. Checking one of those will auto hide the top layer.
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