How do you render against a transparent background? I've been rendering animations as a series of images with a white background and then bringing them into photoshop to remove the background, but this gives mixed results and is VERY time consuming. Is there an easier way?

Render over black, not white, and save in PSD format or something else that supports an alpha channel. If you render over black Poser includes the alpha channel automatically. Then you can use the alpha channel to remove the background in photoshop. That works for stills. I haven't a clue about animations.

Thanks, that does help somewhat. It's still a pain for animations since you have to go frame by frame, but I guess that's just the way it is.

SAve as a TIF or PSD, then you have a built in Alpha Channel.

If you have Photoshop try to use "Actions" for execute batch process for all your frame.

I was looking for something like that. Would you mind explaining quickly how it works? I am using photoshop 7, but have never used that feature. Also, What is the best way to smooth out the edges? I need to save the files as transparent gifs for use in flash (yes, I realize that Poser Pro can render into an swf, but that's not quite what I need). Again, the key is something that I will be able to then turn into a batch processing job so that I won't have to go through each frame by hand.

I think that the best way for smooth the edges is working with Alpha-Cannel and save as gif image. For how to use "Batch Action" go in Photoshop Help and find "Actions"...record and execute an Action (sorry for my poor english).

Another option is to change your background to a solid colour not in your exisiting palette (gree/ blue screen). Render out you AVI and then import to After Effects/ Premiere and use their compositiing tools to remove the background. Don't forget to make sure your are anti-aliasing your images. Motion blur is helpful to take the edge of animatos that are too sharp. Also you can consider a soft blur or glow in post process to again take the curse off. Good luck. JG

To create a basic Action (PS6): Open Windows> Show Action Click the arrow at top right and select New Action... name it, keep the other default settings and hit OK at the bottom are VCR type controls - hit the red record button now do whatever you do to create the tranparency PS records everything you do Hit the black stop button to end recording Go to your next image Hit the play button and every thing you did before is played back HTH-Dan

Hi, I faced the same theme a few weeks ago. I would suggest doing the following: Save your images as Photoshop files. In Photoshop create an action which does the following: -duplicate layer (just to be sure) -load alpha channel as selection (mabe you need to invert this) - delete selection - *** defringe with a radius of 1 *** - save (again as psd, or maybe as gif, though I wouldnt advice on saving as gif automatically, as gif only supports 256 colors, and you should hand tune these colors to get the best result.) BTW, I think Flash imports png files, too. So youll get a lot better image quality (24 bit) including transparency...