I like to create my character animations in Poser 7 and then add them as foregrounds (via compositing) to movies in a video editor (Final Cut Pro in my case). Keying (in the video editor) is really tricky, however -- I'm never sure what the best background color to use in Poser to get the cleanest knockout, though I suppose it may vary according to the Poser character(s) I'm using. The standard Poser gray-brown works okay, but not perfectly. The supposedly superior (for keying) blue or green backgrounds often leave tricky edges. Which is best? I need cleaner keying! Second, I recall someone talking about generating alpha channels in Poser as the best way to composite a Poser character animation in a video editor. Anyone know how that might work? SS

If you render the Poser animation as a sequence of images, you can select .tiff or .png format. The Poser background color then automatically becomes transparent.

The technique I use for live compositing in Visual Jockey is to render the movie a second time in silhouette mode (antialiased) which I use as a track matte

3Dave
aka
VJ Flickering Light

I use Poser 6 and Ulead Video Studio, but have found that if I render the animation as an uncompressed AVI file, I can then just add it into the overlay track in my editing program. It keeps all the alpha channels including those for semi transparent objects (as long as you don't use raytracing to render it).

I render Poser figures in Cinema 4D, but I think you can do the same in Poser: what I generally do is render the animation (as stills with an alpha channel, then assembled in Quicktime pro) with the background movie playing in the background, then composite in Final Cut, that way you don't have to worry about antialiasing to the wrong color and getting that weird edge. If the background movie doesn't change a lot, you can sometimes get away with using a still in the background.

--Tim

http://www.auroratrek.com

Hey Skeetshooter To start with, try this test. load a figure into Poser and then select "render settings" under the Render menu. On the right side you'll see the option "render over" - set this option to "Black" Now do a render. Export the image in .png format and load it into your main art program (ie: Photoshop). You should see right away that the figure appears on a transparent background. You can render out a sequence of images this way and then load them into Final Cut Pro for video editing (check your manual for loading in a sequence of images with pre-multiplied Alpha) You can do the same with video but you'll need to select uncompressed video or a lossless codec with RGA+Alpha. I prefer using a lossless codec over uncompressed so as to keep the file sizes manageable. later joe

re: dave3d's method, be sure to set foreground color to 255, 255, 255 and bg color to 0, 0, 0 before rendering the silhouette.

jdcooke, what codec do you use?

 
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I've had great results with a freeware lossless codec called Lagarith. Here's a page with some info on it plus a download link http://www.videohelp.com/tools?tool=Lagarith_Lossless_Video_Codec Take care joe

Attached Link: http://www.videohelp.com/tools?tool=Lagarith_Lossless_Video_Codec

I've made the link clickable for others to use more easily.

Thanks. I'll check it out later today.

BTW, you have to use the MIRROR link to download. The original link is 404...

 
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In you render settings you will see many "codecs"
Choose "none"
and for colors Choose "Millions+" the "plus" means  MiIlions of colors PLUS an alpha  Channel .
this is a native part of MAC OS and quicktime
and has NOTHING TO DO WITH POSER  per say.

you will get a full resolution video that appears to have a black background
until you bring it into a video compositing app like adobe after effects or editing app like FCP and put it on TOP of another video then you will see that the "Black "background" is actually COMPLETELY  transparent and will show your back ground image or footage

I hope I have made this clear to you

Hey Wolf359 Thanks for the MAC specific information (I wasn't sure how to explain configuring a codec on that platform). Also, a setting of "none" will give you uncompressed and I believe the other lossless options are "Animation"(for cartoons) and "PNG"(for live action). * There you go Skeetshooter, you should have enough info to get started compositing multiple elements and layers and effects and crud. :) take care Joe

Thanks everyone, including 3Dave, jdcooke and Wolf359. And tvining, I've seen your animation work -- very, very polished, in all respects. Your use of high-resolution tiffs to compile video in FCP sure yields a professional product, and your "direction" and scene-planning obviously helps reduce your Poser workload, but I also wish I had your patience! I also found today a plug-in filter for Final Cut Pro made by Lyric (www.lyric.com) that easily creates a travel matte out of any distinguishable object in a video clip (e.g., a ball, a figure with certain chroma or luma characteristics, etc., etc.). That might be a help in post-Poser compositing, too. I'll find out. That said, I'll give each of your suggestions a try. God knows I'm not producing the quality of product that I'd like right now. Skeet