Masking merge node

Hi there,

I have a merge node before a saver, i'm looking to save out my color corrected passes individually to pass onto the web dev team. I'm working with all 3D rendered images. I've built my comp to put all of the pieces together so I can CC while seeing everything assembled and then I break out into individual savers.

I have been adding a background node to my merge node to get my merge alpha to work. Having the background node act as a null placeholder seems silly and makes me think I am doing something wrong. Is it?

Hi Lauren,

Have a look at the Matte Control node, which is used to add an alpha channel to an existing stream.

Instead of your merge, connect (in the case of your example) the output of Gamut1 to the background input of a Matte Control node. Then connect your alpha source to the foreground input (note - not mask or garbage matte input etc).

Within the controls of the matte control, you can then take the alpha from any of the RGB or A channels from your alpha source. There are also tools there to boolean that alpha with the existing one, if you ever need to do that, as well as controls for matte expansion / shrinking / blur etc. Quite a useful node really

Hope that helps.

DC

Hi David!

This info is gold! Thank you! So glad I took the plunge and forced myself to use Fusion in actual pipeline. The learning curve hurt a little at the beginning but it has saved me countless hours. Comping a 200 piece product line all in one shot. Crazy.