Multichannel EXR question/suggestion

Just putting a thought out there, and someone will likely make me look like an idiot saying there is a better way or you can do it already….

Why can’t you import a multichannel exr in a way that just automatically populates multiple channels of an Action? Even better if it could make an estimate of what the layer actually contains (RGB, diffuse, specular, normals, world position, mattes, whatever) and adds the appropriate node (surface, displacement map, normals map, etc;) and blend mode to each layer. It would save so much time!!

I honestly hope that I am about to be schooled.

In addition to this, I one thought that the way you had to add mattes is clunky in Flame but I actually feel differently now. It can leave a messier node tree but it is so much faster when you want to focus on mattes in a different stream to the foreground. I would LOVE a way though where you could use a hotkey to connect a node and the matte channel connects at the same time. Once again, please school me on this and tell me it’s possible.

Haven’t been on the tools much at all recently but have been thinking a lot about all the things I love about Flame compared to other tools. If there were a few efficiencies made in a few areas….

There seems opportunity. Every time you learn a new tool/UI and you see how they solved it, you go ‘hmm, that is cool’

Some apps who have semantic context of connections, won’t let you connect what doesn’t belong. That can be maddening in Resolve if you just want to feed a matte channel through another node, for a simple matte adjustment and it won’t let you do it.

I wouldn’t want to loose the ability to be creative in the node tree.

That said in ComfyUI if drag out a connection from a node input, it has a drop down of compatible nodes, which I thought was very clever. The Flame equivalent would be if you dragged out a connection from a matte input, it would offer you a gMask Tracer or Action with matte output enabled…

Similar, as you suggested, if you dragged out an action media node, and you brought it close to a mulit-channel EXR it could sense the context and connect multiple channels. Or if you brought it close to another node connect image and matte at once. Not mandatory, but as auto-complete.

Definitely worth looking at.

The Python API lets you do this and more!

Ok. Thanks for the suggestion @Slabrie

Maybe I will build something for this functionality then.