Cinema 4D Quick Tip: Using The Matte Object When Forgetting to Render an Object Buffer Video Lecture | Create stunning 3D Graphics with Cinema 4D - 3D & Animation

hey everyone into EJ from I design comm
and I'm here with another quick tip and
this one is good for of when you run
into some issues and I'm sure we've all
ran into these issues before where you
you set up your scene in cinema you
render everything out you have all your
object buffers set up or so you think
and you bring it into After Effects you
start setting your mattes you start your
doing your blending modes all that good
stuff
and you realize oh crap I forgot to set
up one of my object buffers for one of
my objects and you know the project was
due yesterday and you don't have time to
just you know go in and just set up your
object buffer and rerender again you
know especially if you have a really
heavy scene so the one way you would get
around that I'm going to show you this
before I show you the second way which
is usually better nine times out of ten
and I'll show you why that is but the
first way so let's just say you know I
have my scene all set up and let's just
say I forgot to add the object buffer
for the MA TTE letters here right so
what what I used to do before and what
I've found a lot of people who used to
do or still do is so I only have three
materials in here so this is a little
bit better of a scene to show you that
this could work pretty well with a
dumbed-down scene is you would actually
go and because remember an object buffer
all an object buffer is is a black and
white mat so right now you're just
trying to think of ways that you can
fake a black and white mat so the one
thing you would do is you just make a
material with just the luminance checked
on so this material everything that has
this applied to is just going to be
stark white and then you would do the
same thing duplicate that material go
into luminance and make that black
and so you know you'd go in and whoops
you go in and just replace the materials
and just make it so everything's black
and white and you can see in the scene
right here actually let me go ahead and
turn off ambient occlusion here and that
way you can see you have a black and
white mat setup it's not what it needed
to be but you get the point where you
replace all your materials and all that
good stuff but for you to actually do it
correctly you have to go in and okay you
have to make sure like okay whoa I need
to apply the white that and the black to
that and all that not just it's gonna
take forever and this is a dumb down
scene if you have a very complex scene
with a whole mess of materials it's just
not a smart way to work right and
especially when you have things that
overlap so I have you know these cubes
overlapping the text there so you can't
just easily delete everything because
you still need the the cutout shape of
this cube so it also is cut out when you
composite in After Effects so I'm gonna
show you a second and better way to go
about this and that is by using the
matte object option and if you go into
the compositing tag and you scroll all
the way to the bottom you see this
little guy down here which I'm sure many
of us have never even noticed was there
but if you click on this matte object
buffer or matte object option here you
see that the color default is black so
let's see what that actually does so I'm
gonna go and right-click this and do
copy tag to children so you can see that
as I
well as I go through all these
compositing tags all the the settings of
this main one that I had copied is of
course copy to all the children so if I
go and render this you can see exactly
what happens since I have all these
compositing tags on this cube text
object right here if I move that around
you can see what that is when I render
that again you can see that when this
tag is applied with the mat object set
the black that's just totally blocking
out white shadows all that stuff and
it's just rendering that geometry black
so that's exactly exactly what we need
well once we set everything up correctly
but you know again we're just trying to
make a black and white mat to replace
the object buffer so let's just go ahead
and we know we need the ma TT and the e
to be white so if I go and select the
compositing tags of those objects and
set this to white and if I render this
again you can see that we have our black
cubes and our white text all set up with
the matte object settings and the
compositing tag so now all I have to do
and especially you have if you have a
more complex scene I just have these are
the two objects or these are the two
other elements in the scene all set up
and nulls but a an easy way if you have
a more complex scene as you just get all
of your elements and just group them
under a null again go and duplicate or
create a new compositing tag with that
matte object color set to black and
again I'm gonna twirl this down so you
can see this actually happened but if
you right click copy tag to child
and that applies that compositing tag
and actually if you have composing tags
already applied to these objects doing
this copy tag the children will actually
overwrite the compositing tags that were
already there so it's always a good idea
when you are going to try to fake
remaking an object buffer to make sure
you save a copy so you're not you don't
accidentally save over even though it's
you just have all this information in
the compositing tag you just want to
kind of save your but in the in the
future if you accidentally right over
the flower you're working with but
anyway so now I have all those mat
objects in the compositing tags on
everything else in the scene and if I go
hit render see we still have this issue
here and the reason for that is because
we have this sky object still here so I
can either just add that or just turn
this off completely and render again and
there you go we have our fake object
buffer and it renders out really quickly
because the compositing tag mat buffer
acts as if you have just a white or
black luminance only material like I
created before but it's just way easier
to go about it this way you know
especially if you have a way more
complex scene so yeah so mat object
setting the color to black or white and
create your your mist object buffer so
when you screw up you can easily cover
your butt