Maya Rendering - Invisible occluding object

acc

I have a little challenge I'm trying to work around in Maya. Unfortunately I don't know the correct term for this situation so I'm going to have to explain it. Luckily, it's simple:

I have two objects.
One of them is in front and occludes the one behind it.
I want to render only the visible portions of the rear object.
So I want the frontal object to be invisible, but still block visibility to the one behind.

I can only use the vector renderer (SWF format).
I cannot do post comp work in photoshop/after effects/whatever (SWF format).

Is this possible? Is there a nice little check box somewhere to do this? Or a material type that works with the vector renderer? Is there even a specific term for this that I can search for elsewhere?

acc

Actually, I probably can use After Effects. Yay for Adobe and cross-program support. Maybe there's a solution there, although I'd still prefer to just have clean renders to begin with.

elte

Is this what you mean?



Just change the matte to black hole and it wont be visible in render and alpha

acc

Well, that would be exactly what I'm looking for...

...buuuuuuuut it doesn't work with the vector renderer. Just turns it black and renders normally.



Google turns up only one previous discussion of this in which they seem to have just gave up. Thanks so far, though, at least I had something to search for.

Would it theoretically be possible to pay someone to do a MEL script for this? I'm not really familiar with how far MEL can go and what it can access.

elte

vector renderer was quite outdated to be honest.

acc

No argument there; using it is roadblocks at every turn. But when you need vectors... not much choice. Ugh, I'm going to have to go frame by frame and delete the object manually.

Lamont

So why not apply the background material to the foreground object?

acc

When importing the vectors (to flash, in this case) there is no background so I'd then have a background coloured object sitting there. I need that object to not be there at all.

Basically I'm trying to make a pre-rendered 3D character that can have various accessories (helms, boots, jewelry, weapons, etc) that still fit into the 3D animations properly even though they've been turned into 2D vectors.