Render Elements Not Saving Out After Render

[MGDesignUK]

When rendering locally on the workstation and distributed the render across the render farm; with 'Render Output' ticked and a destination for the renders to save out to it only appears to save the beauty pass.

The other render elements save out but they are just black and only 54KB in size. This appears to happen only when rendering large images (over 5K) and across the network for a period of time.

The render elements don't have their own save destination as I thought the 'Render Output' overwrites that when the render finishes. Any one else have this problem or a solution.

[MGDesignUK]

Still having this problem :(

[AscotDesign]

Same problem here, mine don't save either but my final image size is less at only 3000px wide.

Has there been a fix for this yet?

Thanks

[MGDesignUK]

Still having this problem. Any one found a solution?

It happens the most when you are distributing a render, the render finishes, the outputs are all saved fine and then overwritten by the other slaves so you end up with just the beauty pass and no other channels...

It then means saving out all the channels one by one once the render has finished! Very annoying really.

[juang3d]

Did you tried to render to EXR and embed the render elements inside it?

Cheers.

[pokoy]

I just realized that I had the exact same problem. I reported it but could not get why it happened, probably scene related.
The black files are placeholders, they get generated at some point but no data is written. Also, in my case max would just hang when finishing the render and attempting to save the elements, resolution was around 13k in my case.

I couldn't track this down, but I'm eager to see if you guys find a solution or repro steps so it can be fixed.

[MGDesignUK]

The channels are being rendered out as .PNG's... Does .EXR make a much of difference?

[artmaknev]

Same problem, but also with Vray sometimes too...

I found a fix, before you render save the output as any other format and then again save as your desired format, and then render, it seems to fix the problem for me.

[juang3d]

@MGDesignUK

Rendering to EXR allows you to "pack" eacerything in just one file, so you end with "my_animation_0001.exr" and inside it you can find all the different channels, RGBA, Mattes, Z-Depth, everything you've created as render element, you just have to configure the output in max and it will pack everything and won't create any additional file.

Cheers.

[Paul Jones]

I had the same issue but with main render not just re's. A reinstall and then changing file type to png seemed to sort it out.

[MGDesignUK]

So tried saving the render channels out as an EXR (see attached) but all that saves is the alpha channel. I must be doing something wrong here!

[arqrenderz]

To open a EXR with multiple channels you need pro exr plugin for photoshop, if you are using Nuke, it will work out of the box

[juang3d]

You can also use AfterEffects natively, and Blackmagic Fusion.

In Photoshop as Daniel said you need a plugin.

IMHO EXR's are best handled with After Effects and it's non destructive worflow, it will allow you to perform operations like Color Curves in 32 bit unlike Photoshop which is very limited in 32bit operations.

Also remember to configure your project to 32bit in AE.

Finally, you don't have to force the gamma output to 2.2, the 32bit images saves without gamma so you can work linearly and apply the gamma you want in post, you also have the option to save it to 8bit (32 bit integer) but I don't recommend that with EXR, you loose a lot of information.

Why do you disable compression?  That compression is not like the JPG compression, is non destructive, so you can safely leave it at it's default, it's will make the file smaller but it won't remove any information :)

EXR is a whole new world of options and workflows but when you get used to it you won't be able to abandon it hehehe

Cheers!

[AscotDesign]

So apart from exr files where the data is stored all in one file but need a photoshop plugin to access it. Is there a reason for this to happen? It seems random to me with regard to why, when and which file type it happens too, as I've just rendered 2 views of the same scene, one view saved the passes and the other didn't. Screen shots attached.

It would be really handy to know why this is happening and if a fix is available as it's making using net render unreliable and pointless as we will have to render the images locally and save manually which as I'm sure you can appreciate isn't ideal with multiple images due to process overnight.

[MGDesignUK]

Exactly the problem we're having. It makes setting up renders over night impossible as all the channels get overridden.

Corona masters out there; any help please?