Hello folks,
I rendered my very first “serious game” animation with three render extra passes.
I had to stop the render few times to correct some glitches and due to few crashes
Now I am wondering… is that possible to composite the image sequence with the other render passes even “I have closed blender” or have I lost the other passes?
Tyvm
Usually you can just start the animation at the point you want… already rendered images will not be overwritten (but backups are always nice to have). If you used some simulation and didn’t baked it… then you are out of luck… somekind of… you might get away with starting “some frames before the crash” (fro particles for example the livetime…).
Ty but I am not sure we are on the same page
Maybe it’s my fault describing the issue 
I have rendered the entire animation but I also selected other render passes, depth, mist, ao.
I wanted to composite them but when I load the image sequence in the compositor, I can’t find the other passes anymore as if happens when you render and directly go to the compositor…
Hope I better explained myself 
Blender can composite “on the go” but for longer renders it’s better to split render and compositing (you can even use another composite app).
Oh… and you had saved the other render passes with a File Output node ? Like so:
Ty but I don’t get HOW to save passes in order to re-composite them in a second run 
I haven’t done anything like saving in an output file node, as I don’t know how to do that 
Well, that’s the reason i mentioned it… so now after you learnt you lesson 
… you know what to do 
next time…
yes, but I can’t figure it out the workflow to save the passes! 
I think you save as OpenEXR.
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/files/media/image_formats.html#saving-images
?? adding a output node in composition ?? like in the example file ?? with the wanted images and formats… and then render… after rendering making a new blend file with the rendered images as input and doing compo as you like (which would be the same workflow if using any other composition app)?
it seems we are quite close… 
i added more file output, but when I import the image sequence, they are missing one pass
I am saving the file in png, but don’t see any other output files, rather than the main sequence… where are the other file saved? 
Any extras as always: N-panel node properties…
There have to be two blend files for the two tasks:
To clarify as it seems I cannot have a complete workflow I can understand 
I need to save the passes and render them in a second time, not in real time ok?
I can’t figure it out by your screen the workflow as you shown a “composite” node but I am still talking about the render phase, not the compositing one….
The only difference I see is in the .exr format: saving in that format is the last step to save all the rest of the info about the other passes?
I created the output node, added the socket to save the passes AND must save in exr to have the rest of the data saved?
Ok maybe I found what I meant: https://youtu.be/LA_rr9xvCoU
So I needed to use SEPARATE output node, not just one with multiple socket as you suggest at first place!
Correct?
Can you simply render all passes into a single multilayer openEXR sequence without going through the compositor or do you need one sequence for each pass for a specific reason?
I thought the OP was explorering the possibibilities to be save if the render crushes after he experienced it ?
Maybe i am misunderstanding something but there is nothing safer than a multi layer openEXR sequence.
Or does it need to be rendered to multiple hard drives in case one hard drive fails or something?
Hi sir
I was saving my animation in PNG format: rendered 650 frames in different moments for several reasons, crashes at two specific frames, long weekends I was OOO…
Then went back to composite mist pass, when I discovered in such sequence there were no mist pass saved…
So I went here asking: what’s the solution?
After a week are we saying is that enough to save in exr?
Yes. But there are two OpenEXR. The regular one and “OpenEXR Multilayer”. Use the Multilayer one to get all passes you activated in a single image or image sequence.
After importing your EXR into the compositor you also have to switch the “Layer” Dropdown in the EXR node from “Composite” to “View Layer” to see your passes.
For optimal compositing properties set its color depth to “Float (Full)”. It will then be saved as 32bit image which means that no color information will be lost. “Float (Half)” is 16bit and PNG is either 8bit or 16 bit and you will lose color information and certain compositing tasks will not work properly. Beware that the filesize and the compositing speed will suffer from 32bit so sometimes it is more practical to use 16 bit images.
Here is and image that shows the render layers how I rendered the image. To its left is the Multilayer openEXR set to “View Layer” and one more to the left is the same Multilayer openEXR set to “Composite”:
