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I would like to render an animation as a series of .png images with transparent backgrounds for use in a video. Is this possible?

GiantCowFilms
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A Wild RolandiXor Has Appeared
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  • One of other settings that can mess your transparent background is something in Composing tab. What I did was set perfect white color there with this tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aegiN7XeLow And then browse half of the internet, figure out to find the tutorial how I set perfect white background, and than discover I have to remove the middle box from Composing tab. To future me: I got that covered – Tom Smykowski Feb 07 '22 at 21:02

4 Answers4

418

Yes this is possible.

To save rendered images with transparent background (PNG format for instance), the settings are as follows for "Cycles" and "Blender Render" rendering engines.

Cycles

Properties Editor > Render Context > Output Panel

Choose RGBA so that the alpha from the renderer is saved in the png

Properties Editor > Render Context > Film Panel

Check Film>Transparent so that the World background is transparent.

Saving PNG with alpha using Cycles

enter image description here

Blender Render

Properties Editor > Render Context > Output Panel

Choose RGBA so that the alpha from the renderer is saved in the png

Properties Editor > Render Context > Shading Panel

Choose Transparent Alpha type.

Saving PNG with alpha using Blender Internal

EEVEE (Blender 2.8)

Properties Editor > Render Context > Film Panel

Choose Transparent Alpha type.

Saving PNG with alpha using EEVEE

satishgoda
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    This *is* the answer. – iKlsR Jun 23 '13 at 14:29
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    It's not working for me (Blender render) and I chose the same options. When I render, all I see is white (the material color). – Alenanno Jun 12 '14 at 18:04
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    One year after, and yet again it helped me. – Valentin Mercier Aug 01 '14 at 19:28
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    Why does blender still spend render time with the tiles on the transparent parts? – Anson Savage Jun 17 '15 at 04:21
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    @Anson What I believe is that the camera is shooting rays into the scene and since there is no returning ray , there must be a timeout wait before the render decides to move on to the next square. – hawkenfox Jan 01 '16 at 13:31
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    The funny part is that this answer, while covering how, fails only on suggesting PNG as a format. PNG is incapable of preserving alpha from a render because it uses an unassociated alpha format. It is likely precisely because of this that the PNG format has almost exactly zero uptake in visual effects and imaging circles. – troy_s Jan 25 '16 at 04:43
  • @troy_s You sound like you know what you're talking about, and I'm curious to hear it. Why don't you edit the answer to include some of your insight? – TARDIS Maker Jan 29 '16 at 01:34
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    I can't because the answer is a bit of a trap; PNGs can never render transparency correctly from a technical vantage. Best hope is to educate the imagers around these parts so that they can become aware of the differences in alpha format, and the impact on their work. – troy_s Jan 29 '16 at 02:31
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    @RegularJoe As you can see from my answer, the Film panel is Cycles renderer specific. It does not show up under Blender renderer. – satishgoda Jun 20 '17 at 10:22
  • @Satishgoda, this is a VERY USEFUL information and thank you. – Rita Geraghty Nov 05 '18 at 15:49
  • @Hikariztw, in Blender 2.8, the Film and Output panels are in two different locations. The Output panel has been moved from the Render context to the Output Context. – mattthew May 09 '19 at 08:55
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    @mattthew Yeah, I do find out that thing after I press the submit button. Going to add it. – HikariTW May 09 '19 at 09:22
  • Thanks for updating also to Blender 2.8 (Eeevee) - very helpful! – DerWOK Aug 03 '19 at 10:10
  • I'm using Eevee with Blender 2.8. I clicked the "Transparent" checkbox in "Film", and I also tried changing the "Alpha" setting of the material, but it's still not transparent. – Aaron Franke Sep 11 '19 at 00:36
  • Make sure there is no geometry that is obstructing the background. – satishgoda Sep 13 '19 at 23:56
  • @troy_s are you sure PNG's "cant render transparently", or is it merely Cycles which can't render the final PNG result transparently? With the removal of the Blender Internal renderer in 2.8, many texture artists find themselves without any tools to bake diffuse/albedo textures that have alpha in them. Hopefully they'll stop ignoring these devs, considering that texture atlasing is incredibly important for games. –  Aug 22 '20 at 00:08
  • PNG is a broken format and cannot encode things like reflections, glares, flares, fire, etc. Emitting yet unoccluding pixels are simply impossible to encode using the broken format. – troy_s Aug 22 '20 at 13:50
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In Blender Internal, If you want the background to be transparent, you can change the output type to RGBA and in the Scene tab under Layer, untick Sky.

iKlsR
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    Unticking "Sky" was what I needed to make it work (I already had RGBA selected). In Blender 2.79 I found this setting on the "Render Layers" context. – talljosh Sep 27 '19 at 00:08
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In the render settings go under Shading and set alpha to transparent. Then under output click RGBA. Unchecking Sky in the scene tab will also work but I'm not sure if that method will have an impact on any other parts of the render or if it's just a redundancy.

Monica
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    Where do you see that? I don't see any Shading section, but I do see Sampling, AO, Bloom, DoF, Subsurface Scattering, SSR, Motion Blur, Volumetrics, Hair, Shadows, Indirect Lighting, Film, Simplify, Freestyle, and Color Management. – Aaron Franke Sep 11 '19 at 00:40
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when using luxcore render in Blender, in Camera panel, turn on checkbox 'Transparent Film' (settings is different for each camera) enter image description here

in output panel, choose PNG format and RGBA (alpha) enter image description here

risnandar
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