Problems with alphas

[MiniFireDragon]

Ok, here is my problem, it is multiple problems that involve Aura and Lightwave, so please excuse this post if you already read it in the Lightwave forum. I am using Lightwave 6.5b on Win2k

Ist Problem:

A long time ago on the old forum someone posted a movie of them going up in a puff of smoke. Well, last weekend I was playing around trying to do the effect. What I did is took some video footage of the room, then had a person walk in and recorded it too. Edited the video in Aura so I had 2 equal lengths of film. One was with no person, one was with another person sitting down.

Next I took the video of the person sitting and roughly cut the the surround video away leaving the surrounding black. So basicly now I have a person floating in a sea of black, and since I didn't go right to the edge, he has an outline aroudn him. I did not crop the image or anything.

Then I opened up modeler and then loaded the image of the person in the sea of black and made a polygon outline of the person, not including the extra stuff around him.

Now I load up Layout, set the back drop to the video plate of just the room. I then tried to do the camera mapping tutorial in the tutorial section of Newtek. That got me know where. So I loaded my polygon model of the person. Then opened surface editor and placed the avi file of the person onto the object as an image map. But when I move the polygon model the image doesn't move with it! It's like I can't get the image map to clue to the surface of the model.


2nd Problem

Once I can find away to get the image map glued to the model, I want to "blow" the model up so that I get a mess of little pieces. What plugin - script is out there that disconnects polygons?? I tried crack-it, but it can't handle a flat plane. I thought Modeler had something that let me do it by hand?? Ohh.. you know what, I never thought about cutting and then pasting the polygons backinto the same layer... Once I get the above to problems solved, I am all set.. almost


3rd Problem

How can I render an object without the object being htere, but still affect the scene?? One of the things I tried to do take 2 particle emitters and cirlced them around my object with the image map and made it look like smoke was forming around him as the particle cloud rose. What I wanted to do is turn off the object with the image map and when it rendered have the particles hidden when it was behind the object and visible when they weren't behind the object. But when I rendered it (I set the object to unseen by camera), you could see the particles like the object wasn't there. Is there anyway to do this??


4th problem

This is the part that deals with aura and lightwave. Using the above scenario, I was going to composite the images of the smoke over the video I had. Since I couldn't do that, so I used my object with the image map and particles, rendered and saved the RGB channel and the Alpha channel as Targas. I also turned off my backdrop before I rendered. Opened Aura, loaded my clean plate into a layer, then loaded my object with map alpha map targa (I did 3 sets of renderings, one with just particles, one with just objects and one with object and particles) but it was like there was no alpha channel!! the video shown as just a black and white object. I switched the layer orders around and all I got was my avi plate. I tried all the others and got the same deal.

So tell me this, is aura not capable of doing this?? Must I get Adobe Aftereffects??? I couldn't find anywhere a way to set the image to an alpha channel. Did I render the images out wrong? I did it once before by accident on an animation. The background was set to blue and when I opened it into aura it removed the blue background and left it back. It was neat cause I could put anyhting I wanted back there. I just don't know what I did to make it happen.

Which makes me think... maybe I should have rendered the sequences with a backdrop color instead of a black backdrop.

Anyway, I hope there is a way to do all that I have listed.

Thanks ahead of time.

[MiniFireDragon]

All things have been answered.

Thanks for everyone who atleast thought about it!!

[Tephladon]

Yep, I feel like a fool for buying Aura 2.5 sometimes. I can't get it to composite either image sequences either and that's pretty much all that I need at the moment yet the manual mentions compositing once and it was in a vague at best. The terminology or methods changed from alphas and composites to something else in Aura is strange to say the least. That means having to kick back and read the entire manual to get a vague clues as to how to something that is supposed to be basic.

Either way I used to be a loyal customer since Lightwave version 4.0 but after the 7.5b fiasco and now the Aura2.5 (LACK OF!) help, Lightwave 8 is not even on my list of software to buy for my next upgrade.

[SBowie]

Originally posted by Tephladon
Yep, I feel like a fool for buying Aura 2.5 sometimes. I can't get it to composite either image sequences either and that's pretty much all that I need at the moment yet the manual mentions compositing once and it was in a vague at best.

snip...

Either way I used to be a loyal customer since Lightwave version 4.0 but after the 7.5b fiasco and now the Aura2.5 (LACK OF!) help... snip... Did you ask a question somewhere that wasn't answered? I don't remember seeing it, either here, or in the Aura mailing list. Feel free to re-post if you did. I'm not always here, but there are many competent and helpful Aura users.

Often all that is required is some simple little adjustment in understanding to make something work, but many of us find Aura quite handy. Though not primarily a compositing application, Aura is certainly capable of many compositing tasks. Some come to Aura with a mind conditioned to the workflow of other apps, and then are surprised that it is somewhat different. Others find the differences variously either relatively trivial or often beneficial.

[Tephladon]

It's okay sBowie, I did manage to figure it out andI do still use the program. Reguardless of my comments, I do think it is a good program however when I have searched online and asked around and the questions of compositing has always had a very vague answer with Aura and yes it is sort of my fault. Lightwave also has traditional chroma keying which I disliked but I did try it in Aura and got better results, yet I do prefer to work with alphas.

Lightwave 8 however is still not high on my list. The animation system right now is the only thing that slows me down although the modeler and renderer are rock solid. Still, animation is a HUGE factor and as of now, I'm using project messiah so I have a modeler and an animation program but intergration is key to my workflow.