Working with Multichannel EXRs

Will Fusion get better support for multichannel exr workflows?

I've been learning fusion on and off since it went free. I know a little Nuke which is what I'm using to compare workflows.

The only way I know how to extract channels from EXR renders is to duplicate the loader node and manually find the R,G & B from a long list. Usually I have around 8-20 beauty render elements/buffers and around 30-60 multi mattes (I'm rendering using V-Ray).

It feels like Fusion is lacking big time in this department when compared to Nuke. In Nuke I can look at the contact sheet to easily generate thumbnails for all of my render elements, I can use expressions to easily combine mattes together and I can easily shuffle render elements from a single exr from anywhere within my flow.

I'm not criticizing Fusion...I think it's a great comping tool and in many ways I prefer it to NUKE but having experienced Nukes exr workflows Fusion definitely feels much worse in this department.

I've found a few old scripts but I can't get them to work or the download links are dead.

If anyone out there can suggest better ways of working with EXRs in Fusion or if devs are interested in discussing future improvements in this area it would be great to see what the community thinks about this subject.

Pretty sure the free version should be able to run scripts.

Sven Neve has an awesome script I use everyday for splitting Multichannel EXRs.

http://www.svenneve.com/?p=239

Thanks for the response Ryan,

That's the script I have been trying. Unfortunately I cannot get it to work with Fusion 8.

It gives me an error in the console:

Blackmagic Design/Fusion/Scripts/Tool/hos_SplitEXR.lua:80: attempt to index global 'file' (a nil value)

Has anyone got this working in Fusion 8? or can offer any advice?

There are some people in the comments section of his blog mentioning the same issue.

Check any anti-virus or firewall settings. I haven't tried going back to v1.7 as I had similar issues with the script. I rolled back to v1.6 and it's been working for me.

Tried 1.6 and still getting the same error unfortunately. As for Firewall and Anti-Virus this is out of my control as I am not an administrator in the current place I'm working.

I will try the script again on my home office Workstation.

I'll also try and contact the developer and see if he knows what the issue is.

What do you think about Fusions EXR handling compared to Nuke? I love the layer contact sheet in Nuke it's super handy for looking at your mattes. Can't find a similar workflow in Fusion.

I'm sure someone experienced with Python could replicate this behavior in Fusion. It would be great if one of the devs or a very generous member of the community could look into this....wishful thinking I know but there must be others thinking what I'm thinking when they pick up Fusion having previously used Nuke.

The workflow between nuke and fusion is total different when you work with multi channel files.
Nuke is build around everything multichannel. You can access and manipulate each channel every where in the comp. Nearly all tools can work on any channel

While fusion gives you only limited amount of channels which are kept in the flow and most tools can only work with rgba. You can say it's more built to work with separate loaders for each channel.

Right now there is no possibility to see/access all channels of a multichannel exr with only one loader. So the concept of the "layer contact sheet" is not possible

Thanks for Confirming this Michael,

I'll spend a bit more time testing before I jump to any rash conclusions. On first impression it is a little off putting having used Nukes elegant EXR workflow. But there's plenty more great stuff in Fusion so it's not all about multi channel exr workflow i suppose.

For the time being rendering to separate folders rather than multi channel exrs seems like the best solution when working with Fusion. How ever I do think this is something the Fusion guys should pay attention to in the longer term.