Quick Overview
1. When you first open the interface to start creating mattes the plugin will look like it does on the left. Some buttons will be greyed out because they aren’t usable yet. You need to first add a matte to some objects by selecting them and hitting “Add To Matte” in Alpha Matte mode or ID Matte mode and they will become active like in other screenshots below.
2. Once you have added some mattes you can do a viewport render(CMD/CTRL + R) and you should see your matte render in the view. Don’t worry, your original render settings are still there, if you want to go back to them just hit Disable Matte View at any time.
3. If you’d like to save your matte to come back to it later you can hit the “Save Mattes” button and it will be saved in the list below where you can load it back at any time.
4. If you would like to render all of your saved mattes quickly you can select any saved mattes you want and hit “Add Saved Matte To Takes” which will create a Cinema 4D take for each matte and will allow you to batch render the mattes by enabling them all in the take window and then selecting Render>Render All Marked Takes. Make sure to double-check your output file naming! By default, the plugin copies your original file output path and name but adds the name of the saved matte to the end.
5. If you want to completely remove all traces of Quick Matte Pro just hit the Reset All button at the bottom at any time!
Reach out for further questions: alphapixel3d@gmail.com
Quick Matte Pro is compatible with most 3rd party renderers due to the fact that we utilize the standard render for the matte renders. This also means that things like material transparency will not be supported. Quick Matte Pro also cannot matte instanced objects by default but is quickly solved by dropping the instance object inside of a Connect object.
Matte Mode
At the top of the plugin you will have 2 options for matting, Alpha Matte and ID Matte.
Alpha Matte mode: Makes a black and white image used for matting in compositing software.
ID Matte mode: Makes colored mattes for you to matte many different objects in one render.
Select Children (Checkbox): Will include any children of selected items when matting
Auto Index: Specific to the ID Matte mode it will increase the ID number and color after every “Add to Matte” click which will give the next object a different color. If you have selected multiple objects it will give each objects a unique ID and Color.
Alpha Mode
ID Mode
Buttons
Add To Matte: The button you will use to make your matted selection in either Alpha Matte or ID Matte mode. Make sure you use “Clear Current Matte” before switching modes or you might end up with Alpha mode and ID mode coloring which may or may not be desired.
Remove From Matte: This will subtract(make black) any white or colored mattes in your scene.
Clear Current Matte: This will set all objects in the scene back to black, sort of a soft reset. You will still keep your saved mattes if this is pressed.
Enable/Disable Matte View: If you are in Matting mode which happens anytime you press “Add To Matte” you are in Matte View meaning you can render and you will see the matte. If you want to get back to your regular render view just hit this button and it will disable matte view. The button will also change names accordingly. You can also tell your are in Matte View by the null at the top of the object manager which will say “Quick Matte Active” and will go away if you disable matte view or reset. As a general rule do not add new object to the scene when in matte view.
Save Mattes: As the name implies your matte will be save in the menu below for you to load again whenever you’d like. It will save both Alpha and ID mattes. After the button is pressed it will prompt you to create a name for the matte.
Load Mattes: This will load any selected Mattes and automatically enter Matte View. Once you hit render you will see the loaded mattes.
Delete Saved Mattes: This will delete any saved mattes you have selected in the Saved Mattes list.
Add Saved Mattes To Takes: This will take any selected mattes and load the selection into a take that can then be batch rendered quickly and easily by enabling them all in the take window and then selecting Render>Render All Marked Takes. Make sure to double-check your output file naming! By default, the plugin copies your original file output path and name but adds the name of the saved matte to the end.. This also creates an individual render setting in the render setting manager for each saved matte. By default it copies your original render output path but add the name of the saved matte to the name so it doesn’t overwrite anything. Check the names of all render settings before rendering!
Reset All: This is a full reset of the plugin and will remove any traces of the plugin in your scene including saved mattes.
Help Doc: How you got here! Gives you an overview of the plugin and all of its functionality. If something here didn’t answer your question reach out at alphapixel3d@gmail.com.