Can i make the background transparent?

[J5 squared]

I want to make some text intros and just have them play over a transparent background so i can then overlay them in my NLE. Right now i have the text how i want playing over the black background. But unlike photoshop, AE doesn't let u set the background to transparent, only to solid colors. So at the moment i have just set the background to bright green and pulled the alpha on the green in my NLE, but now i get kinda jagged edges on the text. How can i jus set the background to transparent in AE and render out that way?

 

[Matt Grunau]

Save your work as a Quicktime either with no codec, or with the Animation codec bot with Millions of colors+, as a .png sequence, as an uncompressed .avi with Millions of Colors+, or as a .tga file sequence at 32 bits.

Any of those will embed an alpha channel in your work that your NLE can use.

 

[Steve_Arm]

As Rapier said you need to export in 32bit color information.
AE's background is considered transparent despite the color, unless you export only in RGB with no Alpha channel.
But there is a catch, for soft transparencies you must set the background to a color that want create a bad halo with the background video. Most of the times black is ok. For example if you overlay titles with a soft glow on them, on a red background you should set AE's background to Red. This helps with the opacity calculations to create the correct matte.



"Sorry no Saphirre video yet...not much time to play..."

 

[BEENYWEENIES]

better

better

As Rapier said you need to export in 32bit color information.
AE's background is considered transparent despite the color, unless you export only in RGB with no Alpha channel.
But there is a catch, for soft transparencies you must set the background to a color that want create a bad halo with the background video. Most of the times black is ok. For example if you overlay titles with a soft glow on them, on a red background you should set AE's background to Red. This helps with the opacity calculations to create the correct matte.



"Sorry no Saphirre video yet...not much time to play..."

Actually, if you just set the matting to "straight unmatted" instead of premultiplied (in the render settings) you bypass this issue altogether.

If you don't put a solid behind your text animation, AE considers it to be on a transparent background. I usually render these types of animations out with the following settings:

Quicktime, Animation Codec
Millions of colors+
Straight unmatted Alpha

Works great.

 

[surf]

just export uncompressed with alpha. do not forget to set it to straight or permultiplied