Hey there!
I know I keep coming back here with random questions, but I just noticed that I don't know how to render the composite after all the work is done. Usually I would either send the image sequence to the VSE or another app because it'd be a shot in a larger edit, however, I don't think I can send a multilayer EXR sequence directly into the VSE. 🤔
I'm probably missing something simple. How do I end up with a video file after compositing with multilayer EXR?
I know the After Effects workflow, but it's honestly quite clunky sometimes, especially when I'm trying to mix color management steps with 2D motion graphics. The colors get all squirly and I end up having too many pieces to a simple puzzle.
I'm growing fond of the Blender compositor and was wondering if there's a way I can send the sequence to the VSE and hopefully have it synched so if I went back and tweaked any nodes it would automatically update the sequence for a fast video render?
Hopefully that makes sense...
Thanks!
Thanks Dwayne! I really was hoping to only render once, so multilayer it is.
I guess I'm confused on how to output a video file from the compositor... adding the nodes and such is no problem, but as silly as it sounds I can't figure out how to render a video from there.
I never think of the movie clip editor, so I'll give that a try too!! Thanks!
1. Just start with a blank scene(Delete everything)
2. Go to render tab under color management and change it from AGX to Standard. This will keep Blender from shifting the colors.
3. Go to Output tab. Setup your resolution, frame rate, end frame, and setup output to be a video format. Also set directory.
4. Go to Compositor. Shift+a->Input->Image. Connect Image from image node to composite node.
5. Click Open on Image node and elect the OpenEXR Layer image sequence and click open image. Note: I think they fixed it, but just in case. make sure sort order is by name so that you can select the images in order. I select first image then ctrl+select last image. ***Edit*** that should be Shift+select not Ctrl. Ctrl allows you to select multiple individual files.
6. Save your blender file. Then press Ctrl+F12
Awesome! Thank you so much for the step-by-step Dwayne. I'll give that a try tonight!
No problem. I just totally forgot that in you can also put Movie clips into the VSE. I don't know if the Multilayer EXRs will work thru the movie clip editor. I'll have to test that. Basically you go to movie clip editor click open at the top and import the image sequence just like you do for the image node. Then you can use movie clip node in compositor or shift+a->Clip or Movie clip(I don't remember the exact name)->Then image sequence base name in the VSE. Since it goes thru the Movie Clip editor. Just for those who are curious. Blender's order is 3D Camera first. Then Compositor second. Then Video Sequence Editor last. In case you are using all 3 in 1 scene.
I agree with everything Dwayne said! :) Excellent rendering advice!
And just to be sure you understand what is rendering, here's some screenshots.
With these 2 nodes, one is showing you exactly what is going to the Viewer, the Composite one goes directly to the Output Settings.
Output settings is, of course, where you can set the format you want to render to. You can pick a movie file, or the image sequences. Sometimes, if I know I'm just going to render an mp4 eventually, I'll just render as a JPG sequence to keep the files small. But generally, EXR or PNG are great, as Dwayne said.
Make sure that Compositing button is checked, as well.
I don't often render mp4's from the compositor, though. I will render some kind of image sequence, then open a fresh Blender, drop the sequence in the VSE, make sure color management is set to Standard, set the frame length and size, then render an mp4 from that.
You can also render other formats directly from the compositor. So you could set your main Output settings to render EXR, then add a File Output node and render out a JPG sequence at the same time. The File Output node has all of its own output settings, you could even render the mp4 from one of these nodes.
There's no real way to get the output from the compositor as a layer in the VSE. That would be pretty neat, although the compositor is so slow, not sure how practical it would be.
Nice! That file output node sounds pretty sweet! I'll definitely be using that.
Thanks you both for the thorough explanation and the visuals! That makes a lot of sense.