EXR not showing Tonemapping in After Effects.

[ubanos]

Hello everyone!

I've rendered some frames in .cxr in order to use them in after effects with cryptomattes following this tutorial.

I changed the .cxr extension to .exr directly in the windows explorer. Then in after effects, I'm not able to view a correct beauty pass with the tone mapping from the frame buffer. I've tried to uncheck the "Preserve RGB" function from the Interpret Footage -> Main window, but still no visible change.

What has worked though, is to render an element of the beauty pass separatedly, them import that .exr on its own, as it seems to have the tonemapping "baked" into it. However, it's not an optimal solution.

What would it be the correct workflow for this software?

[TomG]

In general, for this kind of workflow, ALL tonemapping is best left to the post processing software. Most tonemapping in the VFB will result in the image not being a correct linear image any more. Tone mapping popups have warnings about this.

So this is the cost of wanting to use something like cryptomatte, or animating LightMix in video software - you are moving the tone mapping step into post production rather than in the VFB. You gain power, flexibility, animation capability - but you lose the convenience of doing things nice and simple in the VFB.