Ok I had this little effect I needed in a commercial today. I wanted to take some text and put a cool glow on it and then composite it over some video. The problem was I could not get carrara to generate an alpha matte with aurora. I looked back over some previous threads and saw that this is a bug. Does anyone have any ideals about some alternates? Can I use volumetric lighting somehow? I want an effect similiar to the one I am posting, but I have to be able to generate an alpha matte somehow to use it.

Hi Brent, Don't know if this is the tool you need: Render with Mask activated, Aura off. Open in PS>duplicate mask>invert selection>gaussian blur Use original mask to select type>float to new layer>delete background>create new layer>select new mask and fill with sampled color from type>adjust as required. Mark www.MarkBremmer.com

either that, or he could render the aura/text as tiff against a monocolor background, then in APS click on the bg color and feather it in to match the aura edge

Or, you could render the aura as a light against black background, then composit it in as a layer using "lighten" transfer mode in AfterEffects (which as I recall is what you use for compositing). In my experience, none of the post processing effects actually render with alpha's. Hope this helps. Dex