So... Should we set up one .blend file to render the 3D scene(s), layers, and passes to an OpenEXR file and have a separa...

Question

So... Should we set up one .blend file to render the 3D scene(s), layers, and passes to an OpenEXR file and have a separate .blend file to do compositing of those OpenEXR files? Or is there some way to have everything in a single .blend file but avoid the 3D render when just trying to tweak the compositing. And vice versa (i.e. just render the OpenEXR files pre-compositing)? What's the right organization and workflow? Thanks, in advance. Really fantastic tutorials (as always).

Answer 1 · 2015-08-21T09:42:27Z

c

replied August 21, 2015 9:42am

So... Should we set up one .blend file to render the 3D scene(s), layers, and passes to an OpenEXR file and have a separate .blend file to do compositing of those OpenEXR files? Or is there some way to have everything in a single .blend file but avoid the 3D render when just trying to tweak the compositing. And vice versa (i.e. just render the OpenEXR files pre-compositing)? What's the right organization and workflow? As a clarification, I'm thinking about animations and not single images. Thanks, in advance. Really fantastic tutorials (as always).

Answer 2 · 2015-10-12T19:13:06Z

Kent Trammell replied October 12, 2015 7:13pm

When it comes to animations, personally I recommend rendering out your passes/layers as image sequences. That way I don't have to re-render 3D + composition if Blender crashes. There's nothing wrong with compositing them in the same scene file as your 3D stuff, but sometimes I choose to start with a fresh .blend file. I'm almost certain most artists work based on their preference, not all the exact same "best" workflow. I hope that's helpful. You can see in the Piero course how I generally work when rendering and compositing animation: https://cgcookie.com/course/short-film-character-production/