Render smoke separately to change smoke color in post production

Support Basics & Interface
1

Hi,

Is there a way to render smoke in a separate image sequence?
I want to add it in editing phase so I have the option like change color of the smoke etc.

I know volumetric can not be rendered with cryptomatte.
Render as PNG with alpha in a seperate scene is possible, but these files are too large for my animation.

So is there maybe another option?

2

Put it on a different view layer

3

Rendering as a EXR sequence can result in smaller file sizes.

4

So I presume, render it in separate view layer as jpg for example. The smoke will be grey on a black background.

Is it then possible to mask out the black of this image in after effects?

5

I would never, ever suggest rendering a JPG sequence if you’re going to composite that in after effects. JPG can be ok for a delivery format, but not for the production stage.

6

I understand jpg holds not much data and is already compressed.
But on a different view layer it renders the HDRi behind the smoke. So maybe the smoke in a different scene in which I can set the background to render transparent?

I also want to seperate the smoke in the render phase because the part in animation with smoke takes significantly slower then the frames without smoke.

7

View layers might be useful for you. Here is quick a tutorial that explains the basics.

8

I thanks, I will check it.