From the course: After Effects Apprentice: 06 Type and Music

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Rendering with alpha channels

Rendering with alpha channels - After Effects Tutorial

From the course: After Effects Apprentice: 06 Type and Music

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Rendering with alpha channels

We have a text animation we are happy with, and now we'd like to render it. If you recall, I have two layers in this animation: I have the text layer, and I have a background movie with the penguins. If I was to render this as a composite, I only need to render the RGB channels. I wouldn't need an alpha channel because the movie is filling the entire frame. However, let's say your client isn't sure of what the background movie should be, so they've asked you only to render the animated title. In order for them to composite this animation on another background, I need to render an alpha channel. I will turn on the transparency grid so you can see exactly what's transparent and also see that this title has a nice black drop shadow. I want to make sure that the shadow is composited smoothly on whatever background they add in the editing program. If you'd like to see what the alpha channel looks like, you can set the Show Channels to Alpha Channel, and you can even RAM preview it…

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