Motion projects losing transparency on export

Anyone else having this problem. while working on motion projects that are 3D w camera through several iterations, the project no longer outputs correctly with clear alpha channels, even though I'm sending them out that way in ProRes 444.

Sometimes it helps to throw away or turn off the bottom group, then things work again. But with my current project I can't get a transparent output. Very frustrating!

All I can say is double-check all your settings. I saw this on the Cow forum too. I cannot replicate.

Make are that in your project setting the background is set to Transparent. It seems to now have a new setting called environment.

Hope that helps.

Environment only effects 3D text environment settings. It should still be an alpha channel when exporting as ProRex 4444 or an appropriate image sequence.

To clarify a bit, there are actually 2 environment settings in Motion.

In the project settings (command+J), there is (and has been for years) an Environment setting that makes the scenes background color visible in exports with a solid alpha, similar to the solid setting in project properties . The difference is layers can interact with the background color (blend modes and layer reflections). This is the option Deyson is describing.

Motion 5.2 has an environment option for lighting and reflecting the environment images on 3D text layers. This setting does not affect the background transparency and is what BenB is describing.

FWIW, I've not seen the issue you are describing. My first thought is to check to make sure that there is not something in your scene causing this. I'd find the section of your project where the background transparency is wrong in the export and double check the alpha in the canvas. I use shift-A/shift-C to toggle and check alpha all the time it will show you the raw alpha for the scene. If it's correct there, the project background settings and then I'd double check your export render settings.

Great answer GFXZen! Thank you for the detailed information. It is always nice to learn something new.

Have a great day!