How do I save an image file without the grey

[mojo77]

standard Maya background??

Can anyone tell me how to save a scene as a .tiff with a transparent background??

Thanks!!!

[joojaa]

The default bacground is black, not grey. You are probably talking about the view panel? Its a different thing alltogether, its just the preview of your work.

The idea is that you render out your work and save that. You can do this in many ways (you have a huge task at hand since you must understand the entire IDEA first), read the manual (hit f1).

But basicaly you hit the render button and save out as a tif or something (for animations you use batch render, again read the manual).

Then transparency is interpretted by premultiplying black but programs like photoshop want straight alpha. So set render globals premultiply to off and treshold to 1.

Then depending on your program you may need to load the alpha channel back as a matte.

As you can se theres a LOT of info here so hope you can cope with the culture shock ive just blasted you with. If CG is a 100 story building then you are standing outside. And offcourse to realy understand everything you need to use the stairs.

[mojo77]

OK....so I save it as a tiff, in Maya, first or after setting globals to premultiply to off and threshold to 1........

Where do I set render globals to premultiply to off and threshold to 1??

Does this mean it would open up in Photoshop with a transparent background?

I will be using Photoshop 7.

This sounds a bit complicated. I've used another 3d program where I was able to save the 'scene' / 'view' as a tiff with RGB Alpha enabled, one simple operation. When I opened it up in Photoshop, the background (default black colour) was automatically transparent.

Are you saying that you are always stuck with a black background in Maya?

I've got alot of images to produce in this way because I'm using a model that I made in Maya, in a flash mx presentation, for a college project.

Your help is much appreciated.

(and yes, it is definitely back to square 0 with me, as I've already got preconceived ideas about how Maya should work, from knowing another 3d program, so most of the time I'm searching for functions that don't exist!!!)

[joojaa]

Cant temeber offhand (no photoship installed), but they did at one time autoload the alpha, but it was disabled in a later .01 patch (if i remeber correctly the version number) because core photoshop users didnt want the feature. I think they ship iwth a alternate tif importer, if you like the alpha autoload.

In general i dont refomend this as it might cause problems, whan alpha is just some extra utility channel

[jtk77]

I'm honestly totaly confused with this question. But I might know what could be going on.
Photoshop 7 has a HUGE issue with TGAs , its basacally broken so it deletes the alpha channel . You have to get the fix of photoshop 7.1 or you're going to be ripping you hair out. 7.0 is broken so get the 7.1 update off the Adobe site.

With that said, I have no idea why you would have any issue rendering out a frame in maya, loading the alpha in photoshop.
Anyway there yea go.

[joojaa]

The user didnt know how to render!

Yes well it isnt broken, most users just tought it was. it worked fine it just didnt take care of non straight matting. thats all. you needed still to run remove black matte after the fact unless it was straight alpha.

Anyway because it worked unlike it worked in previous version, and no one realy read the notes so they tought it was broken and didnt think furter. It was changed because everyone screamed broken. Typical... now it will never be automated again.

[mojo77]

There are two ways to do it.......

1) If you open the iff file in fcheck and save it as a tiff, then open it in windows picture viewer and save it as a png file.

And voila!!! A transparent background!!

2) Another way is to open the iff file in photoshop and select the alpha channel (then select inverse) and delete the background. This also works.

[joojaa]

Your allmost there, but not quite. It works on any format that supports alpha in photoshop.

But the original asker didnt know how to render.

As long as alpha is straight, just luoad the alpha in to the pictures layer.

if premult loading it as selection and deleting works, altough you may need to defringe for best results.

[mojo77]

Hi Joojaa

I posted the original question and I do know how to do simple renders (nothing fancy yet though).

When I rendered the image in Maya I made sure that all channels were enabled in the the 'render view>Display>All Channels' window.

I was then able to save as a tiff image, which I opened up in picture viewer and saved as a png.

This png then opens in photoshop as a transparent background.

I can't think of an easier way to do it. This way means that I don't have to mess around in photoshop altering the image.

[joojaa]

clearly not tough!

Open the image directly in photoshop load channel assign the channel as alpha to picture. Its simpler and faster especialy onece youve set up a action to autoamte it for you so its 2 clicks instead of 3, besided png can only handle 8 bit images.

Photosohop did once automate this but as i said hardcore photoshop users tought it was flawed, while it was not.

[joojaa]

oh and also fcheck wont convert pictures that are bigger than your screen resolution so you couldnt use it if you rendered for print.

[mojo77]

I finally get it I think. So I save my high quality tiff image in Maya.

Then in photoshop I went to Select>Load Selection (Alpha1) and ticked invert and deleted it.

Thanks for all your help.

[mojo77]

rendering files.

I've saved loads of 'Maya vector' renders as a .ai (illustrator) files. I saved the dimensions of the scene as 640x480 in MayaVector.

But now I've got a problem because now that they are .ai files they have lost their position in the 640x480 scene and they aren't contained by the scenes boundaries.

I'm trying to produce a Flash mx presentation with these .ai files which will be overlaid over each other in Flash mx,.......but this is going to be impossible as each file doesn't have the 640x480 scene boundaries anymore!!

Am I totally stuffed or is there a way around this?

[jtk77]

The tgas in photoshop 7 were broken, no system we had that required Tgas with Alphas could read the file correctly at all. 7.01 fixed it. If it wasn;t "broken" they screwed it up. It cost me aa bit of time trying to find out when my tga ics were not keying when I know I had saved the files out with alpahs. We had to use 6 until the 7 fix came out. It was annoying. Anyway...

[joojaa]

no it wasnt broken, i initialy tought it was broken too i later discovered that t wasnt, it was just that it tried to automate the thing a bit, but not the whole way (just like PS still does not discern between straight an nontraight alpha in any way).

ANd actualy had i known the fact then it wouldnt have been at all annoying but kindoiff liberating, by saving a lot of time.

[jtk77]

Well either way, TGAs saved out of Photoshop 7 didn't work anywhere else correctly with an alpha till 7.1 but I'll take your word for it. It cost us a lot of time.