Appropriate use question

[film842]

My project requires exporting animated models over an alpha background for compositing in After Effects. It's an HD production and I don't need photo realism, in fact, I will use simple flat colors and textures on fairly simple models. (I'm trying to see if SU can be made to work for HD projects without flickering lines etc.)

My question is whether or not Twilight is appropriate for this kind of output and whether or not I can output with an alpha background. Thanks.

[Chris]

Twilight doesn't support renders with alpha, or transparent areas. However, there are a number of ways to provide alpha 'masking'. You can set the background color to something distinct, like purple, then use post production tools to mask out the background. Or you can render a second "mask" render by using the Advanced -> Alpha Mask preset. You then use the results of the alpha to mask out the background of your first 'production' render.

[Fletch]

if you want 'flat' look, try the free trial version, and choose "diffuse texture pass" to render the animation, then run animation render again with Alpha Mask as Chris mentioned... the advantage here is that if you are going for basically a SketchUp-ish type look animation, but have a multicore machine, it will blaze thru it very quickly... rendering many times faster than SketchUp itself.

both of those pass types render very quickly.

you may find you need better AA for the alpha mask- if that is the case, render Alpha Mask at 2x resolution of final output, and batch-resize the output images in whatever editor you see fit... there are many... and if you want suggestions for one, let us know.

Diffuse Texture Pass can also serve as a masking device with some video editors where you can choose different colors as different masks.