Have a quick question.

I am rendering a logo animation for my mother's business as a TGA file. I want to add back ground to the animation once it is done.

So, to do this do I just import the TGA file into a photshop type program, add the back ground and resave as a TGA? Then put it all together in quicktime?

The easiest way to do it is to add your image as a background right in A:M.
Let A:M do the composite for you.

Well, I am trying something different, never rendered to TGA besides stills, and I also wanted to cut down the render time.

thanks

James,
I see alpha channels in your future.

If you turn the Alpha Channel setting on in the render panel your TGA images will have the transparency layer and so compositing in A:M or any other graphics program will let you put your backgrounds behind your characters/objects. Depending on the background and foreground elements you may either have to do a lot of work or very little... hard to say without knowing more about your project.

Most 'photoshop-type' programs are really only going to be useful in this capacity for still imagery.
If you are wanting to do animation with backgrounds added later you will probably want to do it in A:M or another program that is made for video compositing. Since most of these programs will cost you a bit I recommend doing it in A:M. If you already have Adobe Premiere etc disregard... press on.

My 2 cents.
Rodney

The render hit for a background rotoscope is probably negligible.

What Rob said.
Where the render hit will be felt more when/if you decide to change either the background or foreground/character elements. This is where rendering in layers and using alpha channels really pays off. If they are all to be rendered at the same time they will have to all be rerendered as well. Separating the elements out gives you options.

There are too many options to consider without knowing more about your project.
If you just want to experiment though it can be a great fun.

Render your characters without any background/ground plane. (i.e. with Alpha Channel)
Bring your characters/background into A:M as rotoscopes or layers.
Add new 3D elements as necessary. (Optional and usually not needed if you've planned well)
Adjust and rerender to taste.

The time savings is in compositing and rerendering in this case.
The hit is in setup and initial rendering.

An added plus of course that you should not overlook is that you can often use these separate elements for other things in other projects. Put your character in an ad for instance. Set up a scene a little differently for a still from the short. There are lots of possibilities.

You mention a logo for your mother's business. That is a perfect example.
Render your logo without background and you'll be able to use it in many different ways.

Alpha Channels... get to know them.

Rodney

Hey, thanks for the replies.

To give you a better idea, it is mostly letters with 3 shapes, however I used yves' chrome material and just changed the color to fit what I wanted. I would put it here, but it came out to be 11mb after I imported the image sequence into QT, 1000x800 resolution.

It is a total of 80 frames, not much, so I wanted to put a different back ground for every 20 frames.
So, the first 20 would be white, good alpha channel.
The next 20 I would fill the alpha channel with a crumpled paper material from gimp
and so on for the next 40 frames.

I would have done this in A:M, but I didn't think that you could replace rotoscope or layer backgrounds at certain frames and have it come out right.

Ill see what I can do, but I think if I import into gimp, can't afford the Photoshop, and just save as TGA with the same file name, ex Logo0.tga, Logo1.tga...........then when I open an image sequence in quicktime it should put them in the right order.

Thanks again for the help.

Here is the last frame, saved as a jpeg so you can see why it is so large.

[attachmentid=12558]

If you render the logo in AM with a plain background and the alpha buffer turned on the when you bring in the sequence only the logo will show and whatever you want will be in the background as Rodney said the buffer is turned on under buffers see picture

[attachmentid=12582]