OpenEXR and blender - multi passes

Hello
I am a total blender neophyte who is investigating the the potential of Openexr with blender. For the moment, I have been able to export a file that has image with alpha and a z-pass. For complex compositing purposes, I am looking for a more sophicated solution that includes a normal pass plus reflective passes.
This is for a Nuke / Flame pipeline. Is this possible in Blender?
Many thanks

You will have to use the Multilayer format which is a variation on openexr
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.5/Manual/Render/Output_Options#Image_Formats

This looks like what I was looking for. I’ll start the tests right away. Many thanks

Opening multilayer OpenEXR in After Effects requires an extra plugin. I dont know if this is the case for Nuke, but dont assume you will be able to import multilayer files from Blender and have acces to al the layers of the bat.

… which is free, you download and install it once and forget that it’s something external, so it’s not a problem. I’m not sure, but I think that in CS5 it’s integrated (I’m still using CS4).
The real problem is that this extraction process in AE is slooooow. I always extract passes prior to any compositing in AE and I advise everyone to do so, even though it requires extra steps and extra storage.
From my experience: Blender extracts passes from Multi Layer faster then AE, so I use blender for that.

For what it may be worth, “using MultiLayer files” is my workflow in Blender … stem to stern, start to finish. The process for any shot is a production-line of stages, and the output of every single one of them is a MultiLayer file. Although the file-format is large (“who cares?”), it captures multiple independent channels of data at high numeric resolution in a single file. One file per frame; hence, one shot-component per subdirectory.

When the entire thing is finished, I have yet-another subdirectory of MultiLayer files. Then, and only then, output is final-rendered into whatever is to be the “delivery format,” and that of course will be compressed. But since this is a straight transcription taken from the aforementioned subdirectory of “actual ‘final’ file(s),” no data has ever been sacrificed, from the very beginnings all the way to the end.

It works.

MultiLayer is a very natural and logical extension to (ILM’s) OpenEXR, devised and made public by the Blender team itself, and I think that the industry has acknowledged this by creating plugin filters for it.

I exported a 20sec multilayer file sequence out of blender 2.59, with import to a Autodesk Smoke 2012. The export took many hours but the Smoke sucked up the sequence in a couple of minutes, displaying huge amount of layers with no problems. The problem is that to make full use of all the layer I really need a Flame. Also, there are so many layers, it will take me sometime to work out what to do with them all.

What to do with them? Simple. Composite them. That’s all. :slight_smile:
The first step should always be: Determine what passes, layers, elements you’ll need, second step: render them so that you can access them (to Multilayer for example, but this may sometimes be not enough) and then, step 3: Composite.
You are at step 3 right now, but did you cautiously render what you rendered? Or you just hit “render”?

Sorry. Not very clear. Autodesk smoke does not have the tools to deal with the normals etc. You need a flame.
Many thanks for all the info.