Am I missing something here? I only see 3 save options for animations in Bryce. AVI, BMP sequence, and Quicktime. I need to be able to save the alpha information of certian objects in the scene for post-compositing! Therefore, I need to save as a TIFF or pre-multiplied Targa sequence (preferrably Targa) for import in AfterEffects or Combustion. I realize I can render against a uniform colored backdrop, and just "key" out the background in AfterEffects, but I designed this environment specifically for the reflections in the animation elements, and keying it out will cost me some valuable time. But I'll do it if I MUST. Please, someone tell me I'm just missing it here and there's a way to do this, or I just wasted the last 7 hours of my life doing this animation in Bryce... crying

Bryce doesn't save to any image format with an alpha channel. You can save out a seperate series of bmps using the object mask and import that as a seperate alpha control though....

In the IMAGE export dialogue, there's the option to save as TIFF. Tiff format supports alpha channels I think. But the animation dialogue doesn't allow for TIFF file sequences to be saved, only BMP. I'm not sure the object mask function will be supported in a video post program via the .BMP file format. WIll it work? I'll have to run a test render.

Message edited on: 10/01/2004 05:16

Hmmm.. Daz Needs to be aware of this...With them building the New Bryce it can be Fixed...

It works ok with premiere, one sequence as the video, the other as the alpha, pain in the butt to set the alpha source up, but prem isn't as good as after effects on this sort of thing

Attached Link: Link

Daz is aware. (and, I'll make sure they are reminded) With Bryce 6.0 I want them to have an option to set that will automatically render a multitude of extra items in the buffer, along with the normal render. Preferbly somthing with psd/psp layer support. More programs are falling in line with this, best example I have seen of this is called "PSD Manager", a plugin for 3DSMax. (see link) AS

Maxxxmodelz, as a last resort if you import both the image .BMP and its corresponding object mask into an editing package (Photoshop) and make the Bryce object mask the alpha, you can resave the image as targa with alpha.

Thanks for your assistance everyone. I got it to work with a little messing around with the alpha layer in Combustion. "With Bryce 6.0 I want them to have an option to set that will automatically render a multitude of extra items in the buffer, along with the normal render." Yeah, I have that PSD Manager plugin for Max, and it's extremely time-saving! Max was always able to render out to elements, but that little program really saves time putting them all together afterwards. This would be a HUGE addition to Bryce! In fact, it would put Bryce at the TOP of the list for serious postwork professionals, since no other mid-range rendering software I know of has this ability. That feature would make color correction and postwork 10x easier and give the artist 10x more control over the final image. But please... make it available for animation as well. Perhaps the ability to save the animation to layers in After Effects format would be the best. 3dsMax can output it's layers directly to Combustion format for instance, but they OWN Combustion, so I don't know if there's any licensing restrictions that go along with having a feature like that.

I would believe the biggest reason to have this would be animation. Of course many still renders would profit from it, but where a user TRULY needs tools like this is in animation, wherein you need the most when it comes to speed, flexibility, and options in the final project. I don't believe having Bryce 6 to be able to have extras rendered out in its Z/G Buffer would be that big of a deal, but having those automatically compiled into one .psd file? THAT would take some doing, lol. (the parntership with Adobe) We'll see. AS

Theres more to alpha channels than meets the eye theyre not just merely transparency maps as those created in Photoshop and Paintshop Pro.

For those interested in finding out more about alpha channels and how they work I offer these:

In a TGA file, there is a bit flag that tells whether the image is stored as normal alpha or as premultiplied alpha image. But Photoshop does not allow us to specify the status of this flag. It always stores the image with this flag set to "normal alpha image".

Alpha Channel Fundamentals

Putting Alpha Channels To Work

Anatomy of an Alpha Channel

What are Alpha Channels?

Truevision TGA

Alpha compositing

MediaMacros