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moonfoxy196
Participant
September 12, 2017
Question

White background to transparent?

  • September 12, 2017
  • 2 replies
  • 56494 views

i tried EVERYTHING! Im new to After Effects and I have an animation with a solid white background. I need it to get transparent. How do I do this? Please help!

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2 replies

Andrew Yoole
Andrew Yoole
Inspiring
September 12, 2017

You've provided very little information or specifics about what you have or what you need.

What are you trying to make?  What is your end result going to be?

If there are transparent areas in your composition, you can see them in the preview pane by switching on transparency grid view.

If you are trying to render video that retains transparency information, you need to understand what an Alpha Channel is.  Start here:

Use alpha channels, masks, and mattes in After Effects

    M
    moonfoxy196Author
    Participant
    September 13, 2017

    I am making an simple animation of a walk cycle of a dog, and a simple background. The only thing that I need is to turn the white background to the animation, transparent so I can put it over the other background. It's all set up, but I just need the animation to overlay the background. Also thank you!

    Andrew Yoole
    Andrew Yoole
    Inspiring
    September 13, 2017

    Oh, for heaven's sake.

    Make a white com-sized solid; AE does this automatically for you.  Make kit the background of your subject.  Animate the opacity of the white solid from 100% to 0%. Done.


    Dave, I think the animated content is pre-composited on a white background.  (I'm guessing.)  moonfoxy196 wants to remove that white background to composite it onto a different background.

    The best option would be to return to your FireAlpaca software and see if you can re-output the walk cycle with an alpha channel.

    If that's not possible, try this:

    Select the layer that has the walk cycle animation.

    Apply Effect/Keying/Linear Colour Key.

    Use the colour picker in that effect to select the white background colour from the preview window.

    Play with the Tolerance and Softness sliders until you get the cleanest result you can.

    The issue here is that if any of your character has white content (like eyeballs, for example) then they will also be transparent.

    You might then have to use masks to replace those elements.

      Roei Tzoref
      Roei Tzoref
      Legend
      September 12, 2017

      In the output module make sure you choose a format that supports alpha. It should have the option on channels: "RGB+Alpha". For example: Quicktime Animation supports Alpha.

      now, it should be obvious you won't "see" the transparency of your video playing on a regular player (it will show you the background color instead). If you want to make sure you exported your video with transparency, then import it to Ae, click on it twice and toggle the transparency grid.

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