[REQ] Alpha as separate pass

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Eneen
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[REQ] Alpha as separate pass

Post by Eneen » Tue Jan 03, 2017 9:42 pm

Right now alpha is embedded and background is removed. Idea is to add black-and-white alpha mask similar to current depth, id and shadows in render mode.
It would give something like this in cycles:
http://blender.stackexchange.com/questi ... ha-channel
...or in vray:
https://www.vray.com/vray_for_sketchup/ ... tion.shtml
(maybe contribution would be set automatically depending on transparency).

This feature would allow compositing with background visible e.g. for clouds on physical sky, replacing only part of background HDR or adding fog to objects and partially to sky where needed.

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Oscar J
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Re: [REQ] Alpha as separate pass

Post by Oscar J » Tue Jan 03, 2017 10:42 pm

Hehe, Indigo had this until 3.6 when it was replaced with foreground alpha. That said I think it'll hopefully find its way back in some form.p

Eneen
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Re: [REQ] Alpha as separate pass

Post by Eneen » Tue Jan 03, 2017 11:09 pm

So... maybe both options are possible :)

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Oscar J
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Re: [REQ] Alpha as separate pass

Post by Oscar J » Wed Jan 04, 2017 12:07 am

Agreed. :)

StompinTom
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Re: [REQ] Alpha as separate pass

Post by StompinTom » Fri Jan 06, 2017 12:39 am

Hm.. I don't see why you can't just re-composite the sky back in using Foreground Alpha?

The alpha pass gets really tricky once you have glass, fog, other transparent materials, etc. How does your color pass then look to compensate for partially transparent pixels? In my experience the foreground alpha method works much better in these cases.

Also, you can extract the alpha channel from a PNG with transparency, which would give you the BW alpha pass.

FakeShamus
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Re: [REQ] Alpha as separate pass

Post by FakeShamus » Fri Jan 06, 2017 3:36 am

StompinTom wrote: Also, you can extract the alpha channel from a PNG with transparency, which would give you the BW alpha pass.
...exactly my thought, just select the transparency of the png and make a new alpha channel from it

Eneen
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Re: [REQ] Alpha as separate pass

Post by Eneen » Fri Jan 06, 2017 6:18 am

StompinTom wrote:Hm.. I don't see why you can't just re-composite the sky back in using Foreground Alpha?

The alpha pass gets really tricky once you have glass, fog, other transparent materials, etc. How does your color pass then look to compensate for partially transparent pixels? In my experience the foreground alpha method works much better in these cases.

Also, you can extract the alpha channel from a PNG with transparency, which would give you the BW alpha pass.
Indeed, you are right, I forgot about that. But to composite aerial perspective you have to render scene without objects, right now no such option in blendigo and doing it manually you can make mistake like files overwrite.
Background re-composite (with rendered pure background) will let you make aerial perspective or clouds perfectly visible through glass (without refraction).
Right now steps involved to get aerial perspective:
- render image with background alpha enabled
- render background (objects turned off)
- render z-depth
- extract alpha mask from main image (for fog-on-objects compositing)
- composite fog on objects and that on background
It seems that to create complete and easy (no extracting) passes solution there should be "alpha-mask" (as in req) and "background pass" and like e.g. in cycles:
http://blender.stackexchange.com/questi ... background

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