Particles nearly invisible with transparent background

in General Discussion

I get my particle settings and density how I want it in the viewer and I get this result:

However, when I go to render it to video using the transparency setting:

I get the following result instead (particles very faint if at all visible):

These are my current settings for the particles (mostly the default):

Is there something I don't understand about what the render transparency setting does? I expect that it gives me the same result as shown with a transparent background. That's essentially all I'm looking for. I want to keep what it looks like in the SeeMusic viewer and render that into a video.

My end goal is to render several videos and stack them on top of each other (because each video is a different part in another color and notes could overlap). I would like to see notes with particles from each part/video. Some will be more bold and others more faint so it's not a big mess to look at, but I would like to be able to layer just the notes and particles separately from the background. I noticed that choosing the transparent setting in render produces a transparent background. My best guess is the transparency of the particles makes them nearly invisible and I want to prevent that from happening.

Any ideas of why this is happening, corrections to my explanation or ways to achieve what I'm looking for?

3 comments

3 Comments

visualmusicdesign

Aug 21, 2022

When you use very faint opacities, those parts of the image could get lost in a transparent render.

Increasing the Particle Smoke Opacity could / should help with your use case.

What you’re trying to do is an unusual use case and is testing the technological limits of video encoders.

Sam McDonald

Aug 21, 2022

Replying to

Yes, I realize that it is unusual. I haven't fully determined which does what yet, but increasing the additive and alpha opacity values for the particles themselves allowed those to render more boldly. I will try playing with the smoke opacity as well. That makes sense how that would help if these other settings did.

What is the difference between additive and alpha values for the particles? Is there a guide that explains all of the settings and what they should do? I find myself just toggling them until I somewhat understand, but for the opacity ones and how it plays with transparency render, it's hard to tell.

visualmusicdesign

Aug 22, 2022

Replying to

Additive or Addition blending mode means that the layer will never make things darker - it will only make underlying layers brighter.

Alpha or Normal blending mode - it linearly blends the layer's colors with transparency against whatever is under it, whether they be light or dark.

Things get tricky if you render out an additive layer with transparency, since there's nothing under it to blend with during the render

You might want to try using 100% Alpha and no Additive.

Just remember that the layer blending effects in SeeMusic are complex, and trying to take layer blending into your own hands for something as fragile as the smoke layer with transparent renders will likely yield less beautiful results.