Using OpenEXR From Toon Boom To After Effects
Note: Both Harmony and After Effects have received updates to their respective colour management and EXR tools since this was written. It may not be relevant anymore, nonetheless I’m leaving it up for anyone who may find this helpful.
Toon Boom’s support of EXR is pretty decent with the exception of not exporting files in a linearized rec 709 but After Effects has abysmal support for this industry standard format… Lets change that!
Installing The ProEXR Plugin
ProEXR provides the abilities that we’re looking for in After Effects! Why Adobe hasn’t gotten with the times and implemented support properly is beyond me but for today this software will fix our issues. You can download it for free from fnord’s website!
Once downloaded place OpenEXR.aex, Cryptomatte.aex, ProEXR AE.aex and OpenEXR_channel_map.txt into the following plugin directories for your operating system, note that while a few additional .aex plugins are included in the download these have since been integrated into vanilla After Effects and will result in an error if installed twice! You’ll also have to make the “ProEXR” folder.
For Windows
C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe After Effects CC 2019\Support Files\Plug-ins\ProEXR
For MacOS
MacintoshHD/Applications/Adobe After Effects CC 2019/ Plug-ins/ProEXR
Using EXR Layers In After Effects
Now that the plugin is installed we can begin to use some of the cool things I talked about in this article, namely render layers! First, export your EXR sequence with separated layers in Toon Boom using the Multi Layer Write Node, once that’s done import your EXR sequence into After Effects as your normally would.
A Slight Detour Into The Wild World Of Colour Management
Once you import your footage you’ll probably realize that your colours don’t look right. This is because by default After Effects reads in EXR files as if they are written in the linear colourspace. Toon Boom writes out files in the sRGB colourspace because they like it that way or something… In any case I’ve already bothered them about it on Twitter so you don’t have to. In order to make things look correct while working in After Effects we will remove this viewer transform by clicking on the colour management button below the viewer and turning off “Use Display Colour Management”.
!! Future Henry here, this obviously isn’t a best practice that you should use going forward, display colour management should absolutely be on in your pipeline. Assuming you are working on rec709 imagery out of Toon Boom however, if you do encounter this problem turning it off will result in proper output. There are probably better ways of doing this now that you should use instead however.
While we’re fixing colour things we should also make sure the working colourspace is set properly for the project. Do that by going to “Set Project Working Space” available at the very bottom of the same menu. For Anijam 2019 (the project I’m currently working on and writing this about for anyone that has stumbled across this post) the following options will produce the correct output.
Back On With The Show!
With our colour settings properly configured things should look like they did in Toon Boom! Now we can break out our EXR layers to continue on with our comp. With our footage on the timeline select the frame sequence and select File > Create ProEXR Layer Comps
This will break out our EXR into all the channels we specified in Toon Boom + a master merged RGBA channel (think the merge all layers option in Photoshop) as well as a text element containing some metadata. You can delete both of these extras assuming you have everything you need in the others that you have specified.
Exporting EXRs With Layers
Sometimes the above is all that needs to be done! For composited transitions on Anijam though it is vital that we keep the EXR layers so that they can be passed off for composited transitions, fortunately ProEXR once again has us covered.
Select Composition > ProEXR to save out all our top level layers as Open EXR render layers containing RGBA channels.
Save out your frame sequence using the following settings, you can include hidden layers if you’d like but only if they need to be included. Turn that on and off at your own discretion.
That’s it!
Hopefully at this point you can see some of the benefits of working this way (one deliverable frame sequence, nice layered comp, render passes, all that good stuff). While After Effects certainly has awful EXR support because Adobe is still partying like it’s 1999 and this hasn’t become the standard for CG and animated footage yet the ProEXR plugin certainly does a good enough job.
