In this Cinema 4D quick tip, I’ll be going over the Matte Object.  This feature is crucial for when you realize you accidentally forgot to set an Object Buffer in your scene after you rendered everything.  We’ve all been there, right?  I’ll show you why using the Matte Object beats the other mainstream way of “faking” an object buffer with creating materials with black and white luminance channels and, of course, why it’s not smart at all resorting to re-rendering the entire animation just because you forgot to set an Object Buffer.

Tutorial:

UPDATE:

My buddy AJ Haines just released a nice plug-in that lets you do exactly what I go over in this tutorial with a single click of a button. Check it out along with his other Cinema 4D resources on his website!

Download AJ’s C4D Plug-in “Quick Matte”

In this Cinema 4D quick tip, I will be going over how you can use Mograph Effectors to change the transparency of objects.  I’ll demonstrate how you can use effectors to fade on or off MoText objects letter by letter.  You can also use this technique to affect transparency of any object that you can apply an effector to, like placing them inside a Cloner Object or Fracture Object.  I’ve made the project file available to download, showing how you can get it to work using a Fracture Object to apply the effectors.

Download C4D Project File

Check out my other quick tip going over how to get a 2D transparency effect on this animation here.

Example: