Thursday, October 27, 2011

ProEXR 1.6 released

A modest 0.1 version increase for a pretty significant update to ProEXR. It includes, of course, any number of minor bug fixes, but also a few pretty significant features. The update is free, as usual.

1. Nuke Comp Builder script
Since the beginning, files saved with ProEXR in Photoshop have contained a little blurb of data detailing the layer arrangement, transfer modes, and other things beyond the scope of the EXR format. ProEXR for Photoshop and After Effects could use this data to rebuild their project exactly as it was saved, but for Nuke you were forced to do it manually. Well, no longer—ProEXR includes a Python script that will read the data (requires Nuke 6.3) and build a comp for you. Linux users, download it here.

2. AE plug-in optimizations
A significant amount of work was put into the After Effects plug-ins to try to eke more speed out of them, particularly when reading layers using EXtractoR. I won't bore you with the details, but in some tests I've seen a 40% improvement. Feel free to swap these in for the ones that ship with AE. Don't worry, they're 100% project compatible with the previous versions you've already been using.

3. Memory Mapping
A new option has been added when reading files: "Memory Mapping." What this means is that the entire raw EXR file is loaded into a memory buffer before it is decompressed. Some users have found that performing one big read can speed things up tremendously on certain networks. Access this option from the input options dialog in Photoshop, or it can be set by editing the Preferences file in AE. More details in the manual.

4. Render layered EXR files from After Effects
This feature merits its own blog post, don't you think?

4 comments:

Jonas Hummelstrand said...

Thanks for this!
I have a bug report with multi-layered EXRs from Cinema 4D r13. I have an EXR file I can send you, plus a screen capture showing how the dialog looses its settings and how I can't get the alpha channel to show up. Let me know how I can contact you!
Here's my contact info:
http://about.me/hummelstrand

Brendan said...

Thanks for the bug report and for sending me the file. There was a small problem in the OpenEXR file module. It's now been fixed and the archives have been updated.

Tim Clapham said...

Thank you for ProEXR! I use it regularly with multilayered EXRs from C4D.

I'm not sure if you've added these features to the latest release, but if not, perhaps something for a later release?

I'd like the option to add prefix or suffix to the precomps that are created. I currently use a script to rename the comps after ProEXR has done it's stuff, but to be able to define this when I call the command would be super!

Add Create ProEXR layer Comps to the project window right click menu.

When I use the Create ProEXR command, it changes my project to 32bit. I'd rather it didn't change this for me. I often use 16 or 24bit EXR and comp in 16 bit without issue.

Thanks for listening and for such an awesome plugin! I hope you don't mind me posting suggestions here?

Brendan said...

Hey Tim, thanks for writing. Unfortunately, AE does not allow me to put new items into right-click menus, so I'm afraid that's out.

I'm going to hold off on the prefix/suffix thing for now, mainly because I don't want to add a dialog. I prefer the simple 1-step process currently used. Hopefully running that rename script isn't too much of a pain.

But I will take your suggestion on switching the project depth. In the next release I will stop doing that.