Corona animation export to After Effects

[drubix]

Hi all,

I'm new to using Corona Renderer in 3ds Max and i've run into a problem which seems very simple but I can't seem to find the solution online. So this is my first animation export from Max/Corona and i'm trying to bring in the Beauty Pass as well as a few Render Elements passes.

So i saved them out initially as .exr files and it only exported a single .exr image for each frame - so no separate Render Element passes - have i missed a checkbox somewhere to render out the various passes?

I then tried rendering out as .cxr files which produced the Beauty and Render Elements but After Effects doesn't seem to accept .cxr files? As a last resort i've tried export as .png's but i'm not sure if that is advisable, plus they seem to render out much slower.

Could anyone please advise the correct workflow to export Corona animation and bring the passes into After Effects please?

Thanks :)

[davetwo]

EXR's should contain all the passes in a single file. (you wont see them if you just open it in photoshop). Just type '.exr in AfterEffects' or something into youtube. there's probably loads of videos explaining it in more detail.

.cxr is corona's own custom exr format - I wouldnt expect it to import it into another compositing software.

If you want everything separare just render PNGs. (Exr is certainly the more 'pro' route though)

Or have I missed something too, and the passes arent saved at all?

[TomG]

.cxr is .exr with extras for Corona Denoising and LightMix - if you rename the files to .exr they will load in anything that expects a regular exr and the extra data is ignored. Or you can render to EXR from the Max save dialog, you should end up with one exr with all the layers and then one exr for each layer independently (a shortcoming of the Max EXR saving process, just means a bunch of files to delete afterward). You do have to be sure to add the Render Elements in the "OpenEXR Configuration" dialog that pops up when OpenEXR is chosen as the output format from Max (or at least check the "Automatically Add/Remove..."); and Photoshop won't load the exr properly without Exr-IO being installed (which is free).

[Frood]

Here is a single EXR file per frame summary which I would always prefer - if composing speed is not crucial:

1. You should render into a multilayered EXR as Tom described with "Automatically Add/Remove Render Elements from Render Dialog" activated. Forget about using renamed CXRs: post processing will get lost as well as certain render elements which you might expect to find after having them created (like additional beauty passes with different denoise / bloom and glare settings or the renderstamp render element)

2. Make sure that every node taking part in rendering the sequence has its EXR setting as in 1). This is unfortunately a local setting, not part of the scene and not propagated when using BB for example. See https://forum.corona-renderer.com/index.php?topic=25686.msg182082#msg182082

3. For older AE versions you need a layer effect called "Extractor" which is part of ProEXR. See https://www.fnordware.com/OpenEXR/

4. For latest AE versions (2020+) you can import the EXR(s) as Composition, layers with Extractor effect applied are generated automatically (ProEXR is shipped with AE).


Good Luck

[drubix]

Thanks for the tips guys, really helpful! Now managed to bring it into After Effects and looking good thank you :)