Export w transparent background

brownbag39 · Post by **brownbag39** » Tue Jan 31, 2012 1:19 am

I'm a newbie to animation and Anime. I have Studio 8 Debut and I am trying to export an animated character to put on top of another clip in Final Cut. Is there a way to export with no or a transparent background.
I have unchecked the visible box in the layers tab, reduced opacity to 0 and checked do not render. Still can't get it.
Any help would be great.
Thanks Mike

jonbo · Post by **jonbo** » Tue Jan 31, 2012 1:37 am

Use quicktime instead of avi. Compression type png, compression depth millions of colors +. Also don't have any background behind you character.

brownbag39 · Post by **brownbag39** » Tue Jan 31, 2012 1:50 am

Quicktime or Flash are the only export options and neither of those give me the options you suggest. Also there is no background layer other than the initial vector layer when the program opens. That is the layer I have unchecked visible, checked don't render and reduced the opacity on.

sbtamu · Post by **sbtamu** » Tue Jan 31, 2012 2:06 am

Click on the Quicktime movie option, hit ok, pick a save location and name. Now a screen will pop up asking for compression type. Click on .PNG. Now you will see a palette that says compressor, click on depth. scroll down to millions of colors+.

brownbag39 · Post by **brownbag39** » Tue Jan 31, 2012 2:20 am

Thank you all. One newbie question down, millions + to go.

MustJee · Post by **MustJee** » Wed Feb 01, 2012 8:02 pm

jonbo wrote:Use quicktime instead of avi. Compression type png, compression depth millions of colors +. Also don't have any background behind you character.

and what to do if I must use avi (for many reasons)?

jonbo · Post by **jonbo** » Wed Feb 01, 2012 8:40 pm

MustJee wrote: and what to do if I must use avi (for many reasons)?

I don't know, i had too many problems with avi so I always use quicktime. I believe you'll need to use a video editing software. Or if you have the pro version you can export as an image sequence using png and then re-import it using the import image sequence script.

sbtamu · Post by **sbtamu** » Wed Feb 01, 2012 8:44 pm

Try this. viewtopic.php?t=19273&sid=29f691d738ccb ... 2067016819

hayasidist · Post by **hayasidist** » Wed Feb 01, 2012 10:11 pm

windows / AS Pro - I use AVI (uncompressed - with alpha) all the time - makes for big files, but it works fine for me ...

cynthia · Post by **cynthia** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 6:17 am

[quote="sbtamu"]Click on the Quicktime movie option, hit ok, pick a save location and name. Now a screen will pop up asking for compression type. Click on .PNG. Now you will see a palette that says compressor, click on depth. scroll down to millions of colors+.[/quote]
Hi,
thanks so much for this explanation, but I am unable to find a menu where I can fill this in. I'm using Pro 8. Could I trouble you to put up a screenshot?
so far I export (command E), select quicktime and check "do not premultipy alpha channel" but do not get a popup screen asking for compression type, or an option to choose millions of colours. The following links go to screenshots of the 2 menus I do get.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/8901012@N0 ... otostream/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/8901012@N0 ... otostream/
I end up with a movie with a black background.
thanks very much for any help you can give on this.
[/img]

jonbo · Post by **jonbo** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 1:41 pm

In your second screen shot, where it says compression type mpeg 4 video at the top, see to the right the little arrows, click on those to expand them and you'll see the png option. When you select it , you'll get the option for millions of colors+.

Snapshot_3 by jonbo64, on Flickr

cynthia · Post by **cynthia** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 7:10 pm

Jonbo,
thanks so much for that info and the great screenshot.
After I posted my question last night I kept searching the web using different search terms and came across this fantastic blog, Jay Versluis, with a posting called How to render with Alpha Channel in Anime Studio 8.
http://bit.ly/yv7yn9
Instead of choosing "png" , he recommends choosing "animation". Here's the link so you can see his screenshots, but I'm pasting in what he says below. What I ended up with was a video with a black background. I wrote to ask him, what I could open this video in to double-check that it is indeed transparent. I have to send about 30 of these little animated videos to an app programmer to embed into a storybook app.

"We’ve been playing with Anime Studio 8 Pro and love it – for years I’ve been bombarded with “special offer” emails that told me how amazing this programme was so we finally gave in. I’m glad we did – Julia and I are having lots of fun creating 2D animations.

The included tutorials are great, but I believe they’ve been made for previous versions of the software. Some features have changed, and this is one I’ve had trouble funding on the web:

How to render an animation while retaining the Alpha Channel.

This feature is useful if a render takes a long time and you’d like to import the final render into another project, or duplicate the same render in your existing project (say an explosion, just like in Tutorial 6.4). The manual states to use the Quicktime export option with 16mil+ colours and PNG codec. Doesn’t exist in Anime Studio 8.

Instead, choose Animation and select “do not premultiply alpha channel”. Do not choose PNG here. Even though this will retain your alpha channel, it will render your movie as an image sequence which makes importing difficult and messy. Click OK and give your movie a file name. On the next page choose Animation as your compression codec. That’ll keep it in one neat file. On the bottom of that page, select 16 Million+ colours (the + being the Alpha Channel – that’s very important to retain transparancy information in the movie). Hit OK and let the render magic begin."

In reply to my question on how to check if it's transparent, he has just posted:
"The best way to test the transparency is to re-import your render back into an animation or a video editor and check that the alpha channel gets recognised. I would use a background that you know, could be just a simple colour fill of your choice other than black. Add your animation to the foreground and all should be well."

So I'm going to try to test that now.

jonbo · Post by **jonbo** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 7:27 pm

Hey Cynthia, your source is wrong about the png codec. If you choose png instead of quicktime or avi, then you'd get an image sequence like he says. but if you choose quicktime, this is the screen that comes up and you choose png there. Yes, some of the other compression types also have millions of colors+. I find the png type gives me the best results.

cynthia · Post by **cynthia** » Fri Feb 17, 2012 7:34 pm

I just followed Jay Versluis's instructions to the letter. Then I imported the rendered movie back into AS pro 8 over a turquoise background and Voila! it works and I’m dancing as I type.
Jonbo, maybe there are advantages to each of the ways to do it, but I don't have the technical know-how to even speculate what that might be - something to add to my list of things to learn. thanks so much for your generous input. It's been extremely helpful.

Export w transparent background

Export w transparent background

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alpha transparency continued

testing alpha transparency