Importing Targa PNG sequence, transparency?

multicamrad wrote on 11/15/2015, 7:18 PM
Hi, I am trying to use Vegas Pro 13 to render some animation I'm working on. I'm exporting the video from the animation program as individual PNG frames AKA a TARGA sequence which Vegas handles nicely.

The animation software generates additional tracks for the shadows thrown by the characters and objects, these tracks are supposed to be transparent except for the shadows, but they are white with the shadows as light grey. I suppose I could key it but that would harm the sharpness of the shadows.

I have never had a problem importing PNG files to Vegas, the backgrounds are always transparent. Apparently Hit Film allows you to import and use these types of tracks using the following strategy "You need to set the blend mode on your shadow layer to "darken". You can then adjust the opacity to change the shadow intensity." I don't want to learn new software, I want to do it in Vegas!

Comments

TheHappyFriar wrote on 11/15/2015, 8:41 PM
Normally Vegas recognized the alpha channel it's possible it didn't and you need to manually set it up. You just right click on the media & select properties & change the alpha channel.

Normally you also have to specify the alpha on export from the program you're using for PNG or TGA. I want to say Vegas doesn't ask, if you export to PNG & there is an alpha channel it's automatically exported, but in Blender I always need to specify RGBA.

So if you can't/don't want to do that, then to do the same thing Hit Film is doing, put the media on it's own track & change the track's compositing mode to "darken". Should be the same thing.
Rory Cooper wrote on 11/16/2015, 4:35 AM
First try selecting the imported image sequence in Vegas property _ media tab and select premultiplied and compare as already indicated. As with tiff in your TGA export you can render white premultiplied as your transparency.
When you rendered out from your 3d application you selected codec = image sequence was png with RGBA as your color depth
So there should not be any issues in Vegas otherwise try EXR export with RGBA so your image will be premultiplied black = 0 as your transparency