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I rendered a first pass with only the Combined pass using OpenEXR.

After that, I wanted to render only the necessary AOV passes (like AO, Mist, Emission, etc.) as an OpenEXR Multilayer file.

Even though I unchecked the "Combined" pass in the View Layer settings, and in the Compositor, I used a File Output node to export only the desired passes (with no Image/Combined socket connected), the Combined pass still appears in the EXR file when viewed through EXtractoR in After Effects.

The file size also clearly shows that the Combined pass is still being included.

I want to reduce the file size, so ideally, I’d like to render only the selected passes, without the Combined pass at all.

Is there any way to exclude Combined from being written to the EXR file completely?

Or is this behavior just a hard-coded limitation of Blender?

I'm really struggling with this issue.

Blender version: 4.1

Renderer: Cycles

Format: OpenEXR Multilayer (Half Float)

Any help or workaround would be greatly appreciated.

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  • $\begingroup$ Is there any reason to use multilayer instead of separate passes? $\endgroup$ Commented Jul 22 at 17:47

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Sorry, but this site is about Blender. I do not know Extractor, I do not have After Effects - so I cannot reproduce your issue there. But when I use a File Output node and connect only for example the Mist, Emission and AO passes to it, the resulting file has no Composite channel.

The File Output setup:

file output

Importing the image back in Blender only shows those three layers:

re-import blender

The same three layers in Krita:

krita

And in Photoshop:

photoshop

Apart from the other programs of course not using Blender's Color Management and for whatever reason Blender has a different layer order, the files are basically the same everywhere and only have those three layers which I specified in the File Output node.

So I do not know where "Extractor" gets the Composite from. I can only guess since you do not show a screenshot of your actual compositing setup that you have done something wrong there.

I have tested it with Blender versions 4.1.0, 4.3.2 and 4.5.0 for a comparison.

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