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Exporting & Transparency Options

Suggestions for new features for Magic.
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jmccann96
Posts: 3
Joined: Sun Oct 11, 2020 2:34 am

Exporting & Transparency Options

Post by jmccann96 »

I would love to see an option, when exporting files with transparency, to select whether you would like a straight matte or pre-multiplied matte.

As it is now I need to make 2 exports from magic (the images sequence and then an alpha image sequence). Truth be told it sucks to have to do that.

Thanks for your time.
Valis
Posts: 21
Joined: Thu Feb 11, 2021 6:37 am

Re: Exporting & Transparency Options

Post by Valis »

While having to do two passes for alpha is hardly the worst workflow for me (try having 18 channels of data to support your Flame operator and Colorist with various extra channels of data), the option to toggle premult on and off would be helpful for me as well. In fact, have more dedicated alpha modules in general would be nice, as in a 'regular' compositor (Nuke/Fusion/After Effects etc) I will often process the alpha independantly to tighten up alpha or a variety of other reasons. Current modules make this more work than it should be, for instance simply passing alpha to RGB to process it and then back again would be nice (so you can 'see' what you're doing to the alpha).
jmccann96
Posts: 3
Joined: Sun Oct 11, 2020 2:34 am

Re: Exporting & Transparency Options

Post by jmccann96 »

for instance simply passing alpha to RGB to process it and then back again would be nice (so you can 'see' what you're doing to the alpha).
I'm a 3D artist by profession, and many 3D renderers, material creation and texturing applications have this as a toggle. So that at anytime you can click a toggle and see what the alpha channel looks like. I think this would be helpful as well.
Terry Payman
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Re: Exporting & Transparency Options

Post by Terry Payman »

Valis wrote: ... more dedicated alpha modules in general would be nice ... I will often process the alpha independantly ... simply passing alpha to RGB to process it and then back again would be nice (so you can 'see' what you're doing to the alpha).
Although it would be nice to have more alpha modules installed with Magic, using ISF modules it's simple to custom build one's own, eg by modifying one of the VIDVOX modules (such as Apply Alpha.fs)

For example I expanded the VIDVOX RGBA Swap.fs module to accept two separate input channels and added the option to set a channel to 0 or 1. This gives me a very versatile module that can emulate all the alpha processing functions that I previously coded. Single purpose ISF modules would be more efficient, but I now use only my channel swapper in development and haven't yet needed to replace it later.

Attached is my RGBA 2ch Swap ISF module and a screenshot showing its use to re-apply side-channel-processed alpha. Magic's Preview window is used to display alpha in the side channel. Note that VIDVOX's Show Alpha module is an alternative to their RGBA Swap used here, but it's not installed with Magic. Here's one place to find it https://github.com/Vidvox/ISF-Files/tree/master/ISF .

All that said, it would be neat to have "Preview Alpha Here" as an additional preview option!
Attachments
Alpha side channel processing and viewing.jpg
Alpha side channel processing and viewing.jpg (113.44 KiB) Viewed 11838 times
RGBA 2ch Swap.fs
(3.92 KiB) Downloaded 454 times
Magic
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Re: Exporting & Transparency Options

Post by Magic »

I understand that it would be convenient to have more "toggle-switch" solutions for things like this, but what Terry said is important. Using modules you can modify or display the alpha in any way possible. Plus, if you put these modules in your post-processing scene, then it's easy to change settings for the entire project when you need to export in a different way.
Valis
Posts: 21
Joined: Thu Feb 11, 2021 6:37 am

Re: Exporting & Transparency Options

Post by Valis »

For me, I'm trying to replicate some of my traditional pipeline done in software, but in realtime.

Each application has its strengths, and I certainly wouldn't ask you to deviate from your vision. I do have the isf's installed, though I'm not sure how current my MMV folder for that is compared to the vidvox content. So thanks for the heads up, I'll investigate that further.
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