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Composite and OpenEXR


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Alright, so I finally decided to dive into compositing after Autodesk decided to ship Toxic with max 2011. Has it been easy and smooth for me? Not really.

The first thing I can't seem to figure out by myself is the new EXR-containing-all-render-elements thing. I did a test a while ago (a teapot, I admit), and it worked great. Now, when I finally tried it with a real scene, there seems to be no way on Earth I can get Composite to read the EXR created in Max. When I import it into my composition, it tells me the file's using an unknown codec. Now, since I used the default setting for the EXR (Full 32-bit float, Zip compression, full image, etc), I don't see why the file should not be recognizable by Composite.

I read somewhere that the EXR couldn't handle more than 4 channels/elements, but don't see anything in the docs about this limit. I suspect this could be due to my computer (the one I'm running the test, anyways) has only 2 GB RAM...

Any thoughts?

Cheers

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Also getting frustrated here. I got the exact same problem with the openexr

 

and composite 2011's gui is a huge gigantic let down.

and also had a couple of crashes where I had a single sequence in it.

and..... and.....

but then again, its a free app so I guess we shouldn't complain or expect to much

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... and composite 2011's gui is a huge gigantic let down.

but then again, its a free app so I guess we shouldn't complain or expect to much

 

It certainly is far from being as polished as max's, but most compositing apps are just as ugly, lol...

What's killing me is that Toxic has been known for being a great (yet underused) tool, so it's really frustrating when one can't accomplish such simple task as importing a simple exr...

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so is composite just a gimmick or are they going to spend serious time and effort on it

 

Imo autodesk should rather swap composite for combustion. max and combustion already has interoperability between each other.

 

i should stop ranting, hehe, Autodesk is still doing a gr8 job

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I don't know... I mean, Toxic has been around for quite some time, and Combustion operates in a whole different front. One could say Toxic is a streamlined version of Combustion, I guess (I'm not saying it is), but I don't see it taking over. I think Toxic is "that nice software no one uses, although it's very good"... Maybe bundling it with Max is a way to get people in smaller studios to work with composition, opening the gates for more complex softwares.

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Combustion can do compositing, but it also does many other things. Combustion is more like AfterEffects, than it is like Toxik.

 

Toxik is simply a compositor and nothing else. Unless they changed something in the most recent release that is packaged with 2011. With Toxik you can only put out composited frames, you can't even write a animation file. It simply composites your passes. Therefore you still need an additional motion graphics application and an additional video editing application.

 

Also, Toxik is a lot easier to learn than Combustion. You can work through the tutorials in 2 or 3 hours and be up and running with projects. Try that with Combustion.

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Now, since I used the default setting for the EXR (Full 32-bit float, Zip compression, full image, etc), I don't see why the file should not be recognizable by Composite.
Are you sure it was 32-bit float and not 32-bit integer? Those are different formats and it appears 32-bit integer isn't supported in Composite.
my understanding is that composit is taking over from combustion, which will be par for the course

 

First came *Paint and *Effect which got combined into Combustion which is changing into Toxic/ Composit.

Your understanding is incorrect. Combustion and Toxik/Composite are developed by the same team, but they are not the same application. They are different platforms and target markets, and AFAIK, don't share much if any development code, but I could be wrong about that.

 

-Eric

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  • 1 year later...
Can't post the pic here (firewall issues)... but for what's worth, I was able to open it with Nuke (render channels didn't make it, though)...

 

 

Were you ever able to solve this issue? I am using Composite 2011 and I have exactly the same issues. I did one shot with exrs and now I can not get ANY exrs to load into composite. I would love to solve this and I wondered if you had yet?

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  • 4 weeks later...

Could you post a screen of your exr settings in max ?

We use toxik2012 with multichannel exr, containing usually around 7 or 8 channels. We use half float but would be a problem.

There is also some very indepth and intesresting discussions on toxik and axr on theaera, which has a very active forum for toxik :

http://area.autodesk.com/forum/autodesk-composite-toxik-and-combustion/

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