I’m following a tutorial from a course on Blender + AE for compositing 3D objects into a scene. The problem comes when I get to the point of bringing in the exr sequence that I create in Blender to AE. I rendered all the objects from Blender with the exact passes that were shown in the tutorial. I synchronized the EXR multilayer sequence to match the AE composition settings for color and frame rate.
I tried both introducing a different layer for every pass, as well as doing it with a combined pass + shadow catcher + AO. However, you can see that the result renders in the viewport only until the 4th frame and then disappears, plus the 3d objects don’t have the proper color. If I use the option with the combined pass and nothing else, I can preview beyond the 4th frame, but all 3D objects disappear, besides the chairs that turn kind of purple. The moment I introduce any other pass, I get a black screen beyond the 4th frame. I set the pass layers a few times just as the guy in the course, to make sure I’m not making a mistake, but it’s all the same. Maybe the problem lies somewhere else, but I can’t locate it, as I’m not advanced in this. If someone has experience with extracting passes into AE, I’d be grateful for some tips. Here’s a screen recording that will let you see the situation:
I downloaded DJV, but I guess it plays the EXR Multilayer sequence fine there (although darker that it should be). I however, thought that the footage and the rendered animation are in the same frame rate, but the footage was 25, while the render from Blender was 24. I interpreted the footage to be 25 too, plus I also set the AE timeline to start from the 1st frame, rather than 0, since Blender starts from 1 usually. Still, as you can see from the new screen rec, it’s still the same. Is it possible that the problem lies in the Blender render settings?
Yesterday when I opened Blender to take a look again, I noticed that in the View Layer section, the Light passes for diffuse and gloss weren’t checked, but as you can see from the video, I have all the passes in the Extractor tool in AE, so I guess I must have checked them when I was rendering originally. But even if they hadn’t been checked, I still had that Combined pass, so I should be good, right? So maybe the problem lies somewhere else.
I’ve seen these tutorials as well. He basically does the same thing. The only difference is that he renders passes for the castle (his 3d object in his example) separately than the passes for the background where his shadow catcher (i guess it wasn’t called a shadow catcher back when he was making the tutorial). He also had the passes for Transmission checked. I, on the other hand, didn’t check any transmission passes, plus I rendered passes on the entire scene collection (rather then separate collections) as you can see from my screenshot in the upper right corner, next to the view layer dropdown option.
I’ve read your posts, and watched the two videos - but to be honest, I cannot easily follow along in the vid and determine what you’re clicking on (or pointing at) when and why. Some voice recording narration of “I’m doing this, and expecting that” would greatly help.
But I will offer a small bit of advice - though blender defaults to rendering on Frame 1, you don’t have to start on 1 (I don’t.). I always render starting on Frame 0, which is what I’ve always been used to when doing 3D+AE.
(As opposed to “make AE start on 1”; if/when you start adding other elements, now you have to also verify the proper start for everything else… and starting thinking of “ok, this footage is F Zero, but the rest is F One.”
I apologize but I didn’t notice that when using the windows 10 screen recorder, the recording doesn’t capture windows that are visible after a RMB click. So I made another recording through a browser extension, along with a voice over explaining what I did and hoped to have as a result. I hope this gives a better idea of my problem:
I did the composite object coloring straight in Blender. But now when I add the mist pass, a specific part of the house becomes brighter. It outlines the wall plane I created to use as a 2nd shadow catcher for the walls. What setting do I need to change to make the walls shadow catcher plane get the same brightness and colorization as the rest of the scene elements after applying the mist pass? Fixing that at least, would be some sort of a victory after all this.
By the way, I tried to export an 8 frame test to a png sequence, rather than exr multilayer, and it runs ok in AE, though I don’t have such control for changing different passes. It still export the mist in this screwed up way though…
I guess these cases are not going to be solved for now. Thank you for taking the time to try help me though.
I finally was able to figure a solution that worked for me. I unchecked the use nodes box in the compositing tab before render, plus I also rendered the Transmission passes. If someone in the future ends up in this ridiculous situation as me - this may help.
The problem is that you didn’t print some of the passes.
※ Composing’s use nodes check does not affect rendering.
Attached is a reference for node configuration.
It’s an older version of the video because it’s hard to find the latest version of the video. The node configuration is the same.
