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I am working on an animation and am rendering it out as an image sequence, currently .png. However, .png loses a lot of the information native to the render, such as render pass data and so on. This makes compositing the image sequence after the fact a bit tricky.
What image format can I use to preserve this data so I can have all of the same options for my image sequence as I would for the Render Result?
Use OpenEXR multilayer.
Think of EXR as a perfect copy of the render layers. Multilayer will allow you to save all of the different passes.
EXR will keep your information linear and un-distorted by color transforms, with the proper associated alpha channel and the z pass as unbound data.
Enable the render passes that you want in the view layer.
Use a File Output node, create as many layers as you need with the Add input button. Then plug the output sockets of each of the render layers you want to save.
Png is a terrible format, never meant for compositing.
