I’ve been doing a bunch of openclip work lately and part of my explorations is in creating multi-channel/multi-version openclips. Think any multi AOV cg renders, or AOVs that change between rendered versions.
I’ve come across what I think is a bug where the channels displayed in Flame and Batch are limited to the number of channels available in the ‘currentVersion’ of the openclip. Which seems odd to me.
For a simple example, if you have:
v001 version in your openclip with Beauty, P, N as AOV’s
v002 version is an update with a Beauty only render.
v003 version with Beauty, N
Results:
if v003 is set as the ‘currentVersion’ in the openclip, you only have access to the Beauty, N AOV’s if you version down to v001. v002 displays Beauty only (as expected).
if v002 is set as the ‘currentVersion’ in the openclip, you only have access to the Beauty as you cycle the versions.
if v001 is set as the ‘currentVersion’ in the openclip, cycling to v001 displays Beauty, N, P. Cycling to v002 displays Beauty, and cycling to v003 displays Beauty, N.
Support seems to think limiting the displayed channels to the channels available in the ‘currentVersion’ is correct, but I can’t think of any scenarios where I would ever want to clip/limit the amount of channels I can access when comping cg?
If anyone wants to give this a try to confirm this behavior is wanted/unwanted, I have a readme.md with repo steps, sample images, and 3 identical multi-channel/multi-version openclips (with different ‘currentVersion’ tags) up on frame. I tested this in Flame 2026.0.1, but should also work in 2025.x.x
I don’t have super-deep knowledge of this area but I use multi-channel open clips and I’ve always made sure each new version has all the channels. It’s not smart enough to pull the ‘newest’ version of each channel from various versions.
For sure, but It is really common for me to get cg with a different number of channels per version (changes in lightgroups/naming, additional tech AOVs) etc.
What I would expect/want is all the channels in that particular version available when I view and switch the version in Flame. But the amount of channels available (across all versions in the openclip) becomes limited to the channels in the ‘latestVersion’ tag of the openclip.
So if cg renders a new version, and I get a published openclip update with their version as the latest, what I am finding is that I am then limited to only those channels in ‘latestVersion’ across all the versions.
So in the example, if the lastest from cg was v003, and I still need to access the P pass from version v001 as I comp, I can’t get to it. If I duplicate the clip in Batch and set the version to v001 to get access to P (as a different pipe) will still only show Beauty+N and no P. If I dupe the openclip on disk with a new name and set the ‘currentVersion’ to v001, I can import it as a new clip and have access to P again through v001.
I did do some tests where I would backfill/forward fill the channels in the openclip with python so every version has every channel, and while technically that works (pulling the ‘newest’ version of each channel from various versions) it is a bit brittle, and I don’t think it has much practical use. Plus it makes it hella harder to communicate back to cg exactly which AOV is busted where.
Coming from the Nuke side of things, where as I version up/down the available channels change, I was hoping to get to a similar experience in Flame.
Ok I think I see what you’re saying. If you copy/paste the clip in batch it considers both the same ‘source’ so if you change versions on one it changes on both. What you need to do it import the clip again and now this is a separate ‘source’ and can be a different version. Does that do what you’re looking for?
No, not exactly.
I can copy/paste the openclip in batch, and set different versions for each, that functionality works.
The issue is the openclip has a ‘currentVersion’ tag, and whatever channels are available for that particular ‘currentVersion’ are the only channels you can access while switching between versions.
In the examples I shared were 3 identical multi-version, multi-channel openclips. The only diff between them was which version is tagged as currentVersion. Each one behaves differently in Flame (in terms of which channels you can access) and that seems more like a defect than a feature.
Yes - with OpenClip you would have to set up another OpenClip. You might try Pattern Browsing instead… This is what I use to be able to get multiple versions visible.