That's how it is set up anyway, with ZIP compression.
In your original post, you wrote, the huge(r) files are layered. What makes you think so? I still bet the render elements you've shown in the screenshot are just uncompressed. Max seems to remember the exr settings at creation time of a render element. You can reproduce this doing the following (no DR or BB involved and independently from render size - even works like this using scanline renderer):
- New scene
- Set main output to some exr without compression (press "Setup" and make sure it's switched off)
- Add any render element, e.g. WireColor
- Set main output to same exr but press "Setup" and enable compression of your choice this time
- Add any render element, e.g. CMasking_Mask
- Render 4k or larger (just to better see the differences)
-> WireColor is uncompressed, Cmasking_Mask is compressed.
So what you've shown in the
screenshot here could be the result of setting up the render elements on a node/at a time where exr compression was switched off for exr output and then submitting/rendering it on another node with other exr settings; compression active that is.
All in all I think there are at least three topics mixed in this thread meanwhile? To sort it out:
- Original issue with large render element files (I suspect just uncompressed EXRs, see above)
- Issue having a layered EXR but also additionally all passes as extra EXR (that's how I misinterpreted it, cause: local settings)
- The dependency between main output file type and render elements file type(s) as denisgo22 mentioned
As for the latter: It seems that even if you do not explicitly specify a file name/type for a render element (usually a bad idea), the exr settings at creation time get stored and are not adopted from the current main output settings. At least compression settings - have not tested others. Well, that's new to me :)
Good Luck