Render Passes
Render passes capture extra image data alongside the primary render. Each pass is a separate image plane — depth, surface normals, object IDs, and others — that compositing tools use to relight, recolour and composite 3D renders without re-rendering.
The passes picker is in the Render panel. See The Render Dock for the full dock reference. Set Format to OpenEXR in the dock's OUTPUT section to enable the Passes row.
Available Passes
Beauty
| Pass | Channels | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Combined | RGBA | The full beauty render. Always delivered; not a selectable extra. |
Data
| Pass | Channels | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Depth | 1 (Z) | Distance from the camera to each surface, in scene units. |
| Normal | 3 (XYZ) | World-space surface normals at each pixel. |
| Position | 3 (XYZ) | World-space position of each surface point. |
| Velocity | RGBA | Motion vectors. Disabled for stills with the reason "motion vectors need a sequence — this is a still render". |
| UV | 2 | Surface parameterisation coordinates. |
| Mist | 1 | Distance fog mask, normalised 0–1. |
| AO | 1 | Ambient-occlusion factor at each point. |
| Diffuse colour | 3 | Surface albedo (diffuse colour without shading). |
| Glossy colour | 3 | Specular albedo (glossy colour without shading). |
| Sample count | 1 | Samples-per-pixel heatmap; useful for diagnosing noisy regions. |
Mattes
| Pass | Channels | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Object ID | 1 | A numeric identifier for each object in the scene. |
| Material ID | 1 | A numeric identifier for each material in the scene. |
Light
| Pass | Channels | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Caustic | 3 | The caustic light contribution. Turn caustics on in Render Settings to render this pass. |
| Light groups | 3 (one per group) | One pass per authored light group. When no light groups are defined, the row shows none authored — Light Ledger ›, which opens the Lighting panel. |
Pass Presets
Three buttons apply common pass selections:
| Preset | What it selects |
|---|---|
| Beauty only | Combined only — no extra planes. |
| AE compositing | Combined, Depth, Normal, Object ID — the four planes that After Effects' EXtractoR workflow uses. |
| Full data | Combined plus every available pass in the current scene context. Velocity is excluded on stills. Caustic is excluded when caustics are off. |
File Size
The passes picker shows each pass's estimated size contribution as +N MB. The total is shown as N passes · ~X MB / frame, and as N parts · X GB / N f for the whole range (the word is files instead of parts when passes are written as separate files).
Delivery
The output format for multi-pass renders has not been confirmed at runtime. Pass data is intended for compositing applications such as After Effects with the EXtractoR workflow.
View Transform Lock
When any pass beyond Combined is selected, the view transform for the render is locked to Raw (linear, scene-referred). This ensures the EXR planes are compositing plates, not graded pictures. A note in the Render panel describes the lock.
Related
- Render Output — set format and manage still and animation output
- Render Settings — caustics settings affect the Caustic pass
- After Effects — After Effects receives rendered frames and comp planes
- Render Queue — render jobs with passes