Hi guys,
I just completed my maiden farm render (for an animation sequence) and now have a bunch of exr files on my client node.How do I combine these to an animation ? I read online that it requires After Effects but can’t I straight away get a a .avi file I am accustomed with i.e. like if I render on a single machine without using any 3rd party s/w?
Add to compositor with File Input node instead of render node or add image sequence to the Video Editor window. Set the video format and settings for the final animation in the Render / Output settings and press the Animation button in the render settings to render it.
It is a standard practice to represent a frame-sequence by a collection of files in which the frame-number is part of the file name. (Usually, all such files are in a single directory, but not always.) So, both the compositor (File Input node) and the VSE, and for that matter most video-editing programs, are well-equipped to understand that convention. They treat it just like a single-file input. (If you put all the files in a directory, you can just “select all” and poof. Equals big win.)
(Actually, truth be known, I never use anything but “one file per frame” except on the final blend-files whose sole purpose is to generate the deliverable “movie-files.”)
The easiest way to do this step is to switch to VSE, add a strip starting at frame #1, select the directory, “select all,” then set the length of the output animation to the size of the strip if it isn’t that way already. Select whatever movie-file format you want for your output, file-name and etc., then mash Render. “Presto.”