Layer Transparency from 3D Renders

#1

When I have mental ray put out a tiff/targa/psd, and bring it into After Effects, it sees it as pre-matted, and shows the background as transparent (with a perfect edge around the object).

Yet in Photoshop CS3, when I bring in a still with its own alpha, the background is shown as black, instead of being transparent. I see the alpha in the channels palette, but if i select the alpha as a mask and delete it from the image layer, it gives me a really sloppy edge.

How can I go about having Photoshop use the alpha to mark the background as transparent?

I’ve attached the psd, targa, and tiff files, along with a screen shot from AfterEffects.

#2

Please see the sticky at the top of the forum regarding TGA, Alpha channels and transparencies in Photoshop.

But a quick answer to your question: The alpha transparency is there it’s a bug in Photoshop that doesn’t bring in the image with the matte applied. If you have one image - then ctrl-click the alpha channel, then press shift-ctrl-I (invert selection), select the layer that your image is on, double-click if it is a background layer and name the layer, with the inverted selection active - press delete. This should get rid of the background while keeping your image that you want intact.

Another way around this would be to export PNGs.

#3

thanks for your reply.
I tried doing exactly what you suggested, but it gave me a really crappy edge around the object… I found the format OpenEXR, however, brought the image into photoshop with the alpha applied and everything worked fine from there :]

#4

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