Luma Matte Transparency

This tutorial explains the process for working with transparency and luma mattes.

Avatar of Niall Thompson
by Niall Thompson

Dec 10th 2020

Preparing Your Source Video

For the Luma Matte pre-processing you’ll need to stack the 2 versions of your source video on top of each other using a video compositing tool such as Adobe After Effects.

The luma matte needs to be on top and flipped vertically, with the normal base video below (unflipped).

Alternatively if you are familiar with FFmpeg you can use the following command to stack your videos. In this example the two input sources are “base.mp4” and “luma.mp4”. 

ffmpeg -i base.mp4 -i luma.mp4 -filter_complex '[1:v]vflip[in2]; [0:v][in2] vstack=inputs=2' flip1.mp4

Applying the Luma Matte

  1. Select your content module to view the settings.
  2. Under Asset choose your stacked source video you wish to use.
  3. Then select a Mapping that you wish to apply the video to. This works best if you assign the content to an object in your scene that is invisible.
  4. Under Advanced Options > Texture Handling Options turn on Luma Matte Texture to apply the effect.

Demo Content

You can download an example luma matte to test within your scene.