To clarify, I claim that Stencil Layers/Render Layers are better than UNREAL'S Cryptomatte/Object ID exclusively. Reason being, Cryptomatte/Object ID is pretty limited in its current state in the Unreal engine. And in order to get proper depth of field and motion blur, you need to render out Zdepth and Motion Vector passes, and combine them in a relatively complicated way, along with some math to get yout Cryptomatte to show up properly. Stencil layers are much simpler and cleaner way to work. Other renderers like Arnold, Octane, Vray, etc, have vastly superior Cryptomatte support.

EXCEPTIONAL WORK!

One of the most useful Unreal Engine tutorials I've seen. From the first to the last minute. Thank you very much. Greetings from Poland.

He William, really great tutorials style, honest, direct and clear. Ill be recommending to my team. Looking forward to seeing more.

Very useful tut...what I really like about your videos is your idea about an issue ..you go straight out to the topic and clarifies it very well...I have learned a lot from your video tutorials William...thx

This has been a headache for a month and you saved me 😂 you are a lifesaver

Incredible Incredible Incredible. Between you and Winbush, the sky is the limt for what UR4 can be used for. You've inspired me to ACTUALLY start a favorites list for learning UR4. Anyone learning Unreal for FX and graphics needs to watch this video. Well done!

My best channel in vfx making with unreal engine. I am Really thankful

Love this stuff, keep it up. You're videos are helping me alot to make the transition from Vray to Unreal for television work. This is without a doubt the future of production work.

YES! This is what I was looking for coming from Redshift and Arnold's render layer

Holy crap this is awesome! Fantastic content dude, thanks!

Great videos! Loving these

Awesome video! Plus is always needed when you're combining two layers that have been mutually excluded from each other, such as this case. The matte line might not always be visible in the rgb, but if you switch to view alpha you'll see it. It's amazing that you can do this in Unreal now!

Another brilliant tutorial! Thank you.

William, this is super helpful. Thanks so much for sharing

*Nxt Level Nxt Level...Waiting For More Content* 😍

Just getting into proper compositing so trying out nuke after Unreal in my workflow and this video is a lifesaver! Thanks! Edit: Just set my first movie render queue render going with path tracing and a couple layers on a simple 10 sec/240 frame shot. The estimated time of 6 hours just made my heart sink. Worth it in the end though.

Thanks Will! I've started learning Unreal recently, and coming from a compositors point of view I feel like there's a lack of tutorials on higher production level workflows and how to use Unreal together with Nuke - and what I can expect from the Unreal renders inside of Nuke. So all of your videos are greatly appreciated and useful, big thanks!

Amazing. Thank you pal, these videos are absolute gold :-)

Just discovered your channel n it's really helpful very good content 👌 subscribed!

Greatest tutorials on youtube!

YAAAAASSSS!!! Thank you so much, VAT works, alpha works, me so happy 😊

Thankyou!! Very useful. Well explained.

This was awesome thanks!

great great video once again mate.

Super Thank you Great Faucher

Terrific !!

Hello, I am not sure I you still read the comments after all this time - really cool that you reply to so many people in the first place :) I am pretty sure I followed every step like you did - but I still do have, perhaps not a black halo, but apretty jagged edge around my masks... Are there other things that could cause my masks to break? The setting you have to change in the project settings gives me the options 'allow through tonemapper' and 'linear color space ' - same problem with both... I do have also TemporalAA.Upsampling enabled for the better DOF. Also my Sky that comes from the SkyAtmo is not in the defaul layer - which is strange.

Awesome teacher, thank you.

Again an absolutely great tutorial. Just switched from Fstrom to Unreal as 4.26 finally has everything I need. is the scene available for purchase or download anywhere?

You are the man

Really nice video.

i love you .. i really find every answer i need in your videos ..

I am so happy you posted this, but one question? Have you ever tried this workflow but instead of NUKE have you ever gone to Photoshop instead to use the layers for paint over? Im running into some issues with the layers on the Photoshop end of things. Any advice would be 1000% welcome. Thanks!

as always, thanx

Heyo. Nice video. VFX comper here. The black haloing is due to the fact that your background image has the foreground stenciled from it. So there will always be an area where the fine reduced value edge pixels from both FG and BG don't add up. If you were building a proper comp, (say a matte painting as your background) you'd have colour values where the two edges overlap that the foreground overlaps. You could try unpremultiplying the background which might squeeze out a few pixels of solid colour so that overing works correctly. Alternatively. If you were doing layering as simple as yours. You could just render the background without any of the foreground stuff visible. So you get the whole image. Plusing can cause issues down the line if used incorrectly. You can also start to introduce super pixel values and nans the more layers and FX you apply. Like with lightwrap,blooms etc.

Hey Will, I was wondering; is there a way to render out using this technique but not having the MRQ render a Final Image alongside a stencil layer? I am only trying to render my layers individually without the default layer rendering, and it's becoming quite taxing on my system in terms of time restraints. I've turned off Add Default Layer, yet it is still rendering the default layer. Any way to counteract this? Thanks!

Thank you so much!

I scratch my head so hard when compositing landscape in exr files with AfterEffects coz it's breaking up to smaller pieces so this is the answer. thanks !!!!

Amazing tut as always! Got an issue with trying to render God Rays on transparent background (using Exponential Height For w/ Volumetric Fog) and can't seem to make it work. It does show on black background but when rendered in EXR layers the God Rays are not showing. Any idea? Thanks 🙏

Awesome video, thanks for making these. Is there a way to render just the FG layer and leave the BG as is without stencil applied? Thanks

thanks william it does work with png well in 5.32 now just need to get the shadows on an alpha layer

Thankyou very much, this is really helpfulla sir.

you are number 1 !

that's helpful!~ thanks a lot~

Thanks William for your lessons! Maybe you have testes it with glass in UE5? Glass behaves broken, not written to layers. In the Default Layer, it becomes visible through the object standing behind the glass. Maybe it's the lumens. In 4.26 everything worked well

thanks man!

thx!.. save my day!

So, will this work with dynamic stuff like fx? Say I want to TS some falling dust for motion blur, but I don't want other elements in the scene to be affected the same way. Could I put the effect in a Stencil Layer and have it work properly?

Thanks a lot! Again! ;)

Спасибо!

Hello William, thanks for all your help. One question, with Unreal 5, i'm trying to get layers on a multilayer EXR using Path tracing. but I'm failing at it. is there any useful trick for this to work on Unreal 5? thanks

Superb, Thanks William, Is it possible to put some more highlight on Color management tool in Movie render queue.

wow amazing its what i being trying to do for a long time , sorry but i have a dumb question is it possible to export the shadows from the objects so u can later put the animation in real footage in a composition sowtware so u can make a 3d real word integration along with the data smith plugin that can read camara tracking ? , thanks ur videos and patienece is awesome

Hey William, nice video! I am trying to get an alpha layer rendered with EXR but there is sky / fog in the back ground. Is there anyway to get the sky / fog to be transparent and not opaque? It affects my alpha. Thanks.

great tut as always! Do you know where I might find a stencil / render layer workflow from Unreal to Davinci Resolve?

Hey William! I ran into an issue with this technique, and it involves meshes that use blueprints to be connected. I have a city environment, and there are city block meshes which use blueprints to basically be connected all together and moved collectively as one mesh. The issue is that, when I actually add them to one layer, they don't render as if they were IN that layer. Is there any way to solve this issue? Thanks a lot!

hey WF. Thanks for your awesome videos!!! Is there a way to convert a world partion to a normal level so I can use actor layers instead of data layers as for some reason I cannot make data layers work as stencil layers

Helo.. thank you for the video! btw, i have a question.. how to import the render result into After Effects? cause everytime i import, it always imported as 1 layer (BG). i cant separate between FG and BG.. thank you

Is there a way to add foliage to layer? I don't seems to be able to find one. Or maybe a way to convert existing foliage to static meshes?

Thank you for tutorial! Just had a question, at 4:45 you say we should render in linear sRGB. Is there any reason why you didn't mention or recommend ACEScg, which from my understanding is also linear?

First of all, thank you for a great tutorial, now to the question:) : do you know why stencil layers broken in 4.27 and how it could be fixed?

I'm getting a lot of help from your channel. Thank you. How to render Nanites view in movie render queue?

Nicely Explained does Stencil layers Support Landscape Foliage?

hey William. Thanks for your amazing tutorials man really helps out allot. Quick question, hopefully you see this. I cant seem to get a proper alpha when using stencil clip in the movie render queue. When I bring it into nuke the alpha is solid and fills the frame even though the rgb of the layer is premultiplied. Im curious if you have encountered this before. Im using multichannel exr as well.

One quick question: I'm trying to implement unreal as my main render engine for VFX. Do you already have or would you please be so kind and make a tutorial for a shadow catcher in unreal? That would be such a big help, especially since your tutorials feel much more informative than most others on KZfaq. Thanks for your great work!

is this the same process for working with path tracer and an aces colour space? or is it better to disable the aces colour output and disable the curve tone?

Am I correct in seeing some limitations to the Nuke Unreal Reader when it comes to stencil layers? I seems I can only add individual objects as stencil layers, but in UE I can add multiple objects into a single stencil layer. Am I understanding this right?

Hi Will, thanks for your videos, they have been tremendously helpful to my journey in learning unreal engine for film making. Would like to know if you know a way to render out niagara particles with alpha channel? I have been trying to do this but it just doesn't work. The particles don't show up in compositing softwares.

Hey William, great stuff as always! I do have a question: what can I do to have all the layers in "full"? Stencils leave a black mask where the foreground is, which is great for compositing, but sometimes I need the full background behind the foreground.

When I switch to alpha inside Nuke, there is no Aplha present (no white, pure black) use the same setting as this video, any thoughts?

Hey Will! I just ran into an issue I thought you'd find interesting regarding Stencil Layers. Firstly, let me start off by saying that I have been using PNG instead of EXR while keeping all other settings intact and it has been working just fine (afraid to use EXR since my monitor is shit). But anyways, so this method you showed actually does NOT work if you are using Console Variables. And I mean ANY kind of console variable as far as my experiments went. I kept getting my foreground layers with black backgrounds, and then I realized that when I turned off my Console Variables the alphas were rendering just fine. My temporary solution is to save 2 setting presets. First one is going to be following your tutorial with the Deferred Rendering enabled and Console Variables disabled, then the second one I enable my console variables and disable the Deferred Rendering.

is this still up to date or is the default cryptomatte workflow more suffisticated these days? Looking for ways to get the motion blur pass working, but it just stays green for me. I do get MB in the beauty pass though.

Very helpful indeed，BTW，your accent is cute.

Amazing! Would this work with path tracing?

Sweet jesus I've been troubleshooting for hours as to why my alpha wasn't coming through, now seeing in your video a brief mention that screen percentage is not supported. Weird that this isn't in the docs. THANK-YOU!

@WilliamFaucher Hello Everyone I have a question I am being able to apply different material to same mesh using keyframe in sequencer, but at the same time I want the mesh to also change, what is the best method to do so? It is regarding mask renders only not blueprints(not for play mode). Also wanted to know can we change materials of a group of objects/multiple objects at the same time. Actually I have a tried using actors hidden in game in a sequencer, just wanted to know is there any other method to do so. Thank you in advance.

Hey Will! trying this out in 4.27 with the path tracer and I get a black output in the exr file, switched to deferred and it instantly works. Is this unsupported with the path tracer?

How do you add reflections in the foreground layer if you are using a transparent glass material?

Hi William, is there a way to create an alpha hold out on a stencil layer? I have a person on green screen footage in a U5 environment and I get the stencil layer working so I can grade the live action footage indpendently from the 3D environment, but when a 3D object in the foreground obstructs a portion of the person (on the media plate actor), then those portions that should be obstructed appear in front of the 3D environment. I know there is a way to do this in Blender, and I saw the alpha hold out instructions in UE documentation but it doesn't look like it means the same thing as in Blender and doesnt work the same way. When my camera in UE is filming the person and a stone fence passes in front of the media plate, I need the stenciled out layer to but cut out where the object passes in front, so that it looks correct... like the person is in the environment instead of floating on top of it all. This issue would be a major advancement in being able to integrate live action footage into a UE environment, but I can't find anything about it. Any tips would be greatly appreciated!

Hello Thanks for your support and your time i need your help about shadow catch in render . i mean render alpha without ground plan but shadow is render with object in un real engine

Hi, I spend hours to get it work in UE5.0.3 but I just get the complete scene rendered out. No layer are created. Do you have an advice for me how to get it work in UE5?

Thank you very much for your sharing, it is very helpful to me, but I found a problem, MoveRender cannot render the cable component correctly through layering, the cable is not visible, I hope you can find a solution

Hey Will thanks again for this great info. So I tried this stencil layers method in Nuke and for some reason the render layers appear really blown out in the Shuffle and Merge nodes. I rendered in pathtracer from MRQ and ensured that I disabled tone curve and checked on Accumulator includes alpha. default beauty pass and alphas look fine however in Nuke. I know you mentioned it wont be complete 1:1 from Unreal to Nuke but it is appearing way off. I'm using unreal 5.3.1. Any thoughts on why this might be the case? Much appreciated legend

Hi William, I followed all your steps and it still won't render with an alpha mask. Although, I haven't been able to confirm the 'Disable screen percentage' - where is this found? Thanks!

Is there a way to add object that are inside blueprints to be added separately to a layer? Right now its adding the entire blueprint, but i just want some parts to be separate.

i create still images in unreal engine using the path tracer, will this work in 5.1? im trying to create alphas for my images for objects in my scene.

Hello. Can you tell me how to render layers in "Unreal Engine 5". The usual layers are there, but in "UE5" they don't work. As I understood now instead of them "Data Layers" but they do not work with "Movie Render Queue".

Hi, does anyone know if this is broken in UE5? i get my background layer with a mate of my character on it and one of my layers thar is supposse to have an object renders empty :(

Hey William, thanks so much for the channel, it's a been a great resource for Unreal. I've been banging my head against the wall trying to get an alpha channel to render. I've checked Accumulator includes alpha, I've enabled it in the project settings trying both linear and tone mapper, I've removed HDRI/skydome, I've turned off screen percentage... no matter what I try alpha comes in solid white or solid black, depending on the various settings above. What am I missing?!?!

Hey William,as i expected another great deep dive great work Bro keep it up....you are doing super job to learn and optimize UE4 workflows

Awsome tutorial, as always :) I've experienced a new error message from UE4.27: "Too many temporal samples for the given shutter angle/tick rate combination..." I believe this came when they remove the shutter angle from the Camera in Movie Render queue? I've tried to set the tick rate on the sequence but no luck. Do you know a fix?

Hey William Can you make video about detailed use of GPU lightmass in 4.26 as there are no in depth tut about it ?

Thank you so much for this great tutorial ！ By the way , how can i seperate the particle FX from the stencil layer？I tried to export it but the FX rendered , is any solotion for this? Thanks again（Sorry for my bad English）

i'm doing step by step but when import it in nuke, my layers haven't alpha data. i can separate layers but every layer has a black background. where is the problem?

Thanks for the Tutorial! I couldn´t get it to work though in UE5EA, my stencil layers just show up empty and I get a beautypass of the whole scene instead, even when "add default layer" isnt checked. Didn´t have time to test in UE4 yet though.

Awesome, clear, informative and insightfull video ... again ;) I wonder why the engine doesn't just simply saves (and render?) a "beauty" pass and then only one mask per layer, instead of full RGBA ... would at least cut down on file sizes ...

Has anyone tried this in Unreal 5 ? For me the level sequence I add in the movie render queue does not use the camera I have set in that sequence. If I open the level sequence up and render from there it works just fine. But I really need those render layers.

Can particle effects also be layered separately?

Great tutorial, could be useful the layers to make this? : I want some actors with an specific values Ambient Occlusion (exterior vegetation garden without baked light,), and other actors with no ambient occlusion, or very subtle values... (walls facade, interiors, windows, doors, etc...with baked light) What could be the way to use multiple values Ambient Occlusion into the same project ?? I try to use 2 Post Process Volume but the result is not what I want. Thanks William.