EVERYTHING to know about RENDER LAYERS in Unreal Engine 5

Compositing with multiple layer EXRs can a be really powerful way of leveling up your images. Unreal Engine 5 supports both alpha channel support but also Render, Stencil and zDepth layers. You can also use the Motion Vector layer to recreate the motion blur in your compositor of choice.

Not only that but by activating the additional render passes in the project settings window, you can also render reflection passes, as well as the unlit, detailed lighting and more.

In this video I'll go over how to add meshes or level actors to layer, how to reassign or remove them. Then how you render these layers out using the movie render queue and sequencer. I'll also show some tips and tricks, caveats with Nanite meshes and how combine the layers in a VFX compositor, such as the free open source Natron.

💡 00:00 Intro to video
💡 00:14 tiedtke.
💡 00:20 Setting up a layer system
💡 03:14 Rendering
💡 04:55 zDepth and Motion Vector layers
💡 06:47 Adding Stencil layers
💡 09:15 Troubleshooting empty render layers
💡 11:14 Combining layers in post
💡 13:00 Outro

Thanks for watching, if you like the video feel free to like and subscribe for more tutorials on #unrealengine5 #vfx and #compositing

Follow my journey to become a VFX Artist, Digital Compositor and Lighting 3D artist working in the industry.

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𝗟𝗼𝗼𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗼 𝗯𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝗮 𝗽𝗿𝗼 𝘃𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗼𝗴𝗿𝗮𝗽𝗵𝗲𝗿? 😍 𝗛𝗲𝗿𝗲'𝘀 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗜 𝘂𝘀𝗲 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗺𝘆 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸.

💻 𝗦𝗼𝗳𝘁𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗲:
🔸 DaVinci Resolve 18
🔸 DaVinci Fusion Studio 18
🔸 Storyboarder Pro
🔸 Autodesk Maya 2022
🔸 Blender 3.3
🔸 Unreal Engine 5
🔸 Natron Open Source
🔸 Adobe After Effects
🔸 Adobe Photoshop
🔸 Adobe Premiere Pro
🔸 Foundry Nuke
🔸 Substance Painter
🔸 Substance Designer

🎥 𝗖𝗮𝗺𝗲𝗿𝗮𝘀:
🔸 Sony CineAlta F5 + R5 4K RAW Recorder
🔸 Sony Alpha A7S III
🔸 Sony Alpha A6300
🔸 Sony Alpha A5100
🔸 Insta360 One R

📷 𝗟𝗲𝗻𝘀𝗲𝘀:
🔸 XEEN 16mm T2,6 Cinema Prime
🔸 Sigma 24-70mm 2.8 ART
🔸 Samyang 12mm 2.0
🔸 Takumar 135mm F3,5 M42 mount
🔸 Helios 44-2 58mm F2 w/ M42 to EF adapter

💡 𝗟𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁𝘀:
🔸 Godox SL200 II
🔸 Aputure LS 300D
🔸 Aputure LS 120D II

💻 𝗘𝗱𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴:
🔸 AMD Ryzen Threadripper 5800X
🔸 NVidia Geforce GTX 3090
🔸 NVidia Geforce GTX 1080 TI
🔸 Logitech MX Master
🔸 Microsoft Designer Keyboard

💾 𝗦𝘁𝗼𝗿𝗮𝗴𝗲:
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🔸 Sandisk 128GB 170mb/s SD card
🔸 Prograde 128GB V90 300mb/s SD card

I've worked 9+ years as a Director of Photography in Sweden, working on projects ranging from feature films to commercials and music videos. Currently studying at Visual Magic in Skellefteå, Sweden. Years active in the 3D industry is about 2 years. Focusing on visual effects, 3D animation and lighting which is my passion.

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[tiedtkeio]

As always, let me know if you've got any question here in the comments! I'll try to reply as quickly as possible. Thanks! 🤗

[andrewwelch]

If you have ANY Nanite meshes in your scene (not just in the layers your rendering), this won't work. If you do have Nanite objects, disable Nanite by entering the console command "r.Nanite 0" and your layers will render as expected. Once you have rendered your layers, you can enable Nanite again by entering "r.Nanite 1". Hope that helps!

[simonflash_edit]

Thanks for this helpful video. It's also great that you mentioned that there's a problem with using nanite meshes, as this saved me alot of time and headaches :)

[littlecurrybread]

Exactly what I was looking for, thank you!

[mdesignanimationsricardomo]

Hey man...let me see if I have any luck with this problem and if you know anything about it. Can’t right click or drag items to create new layer, I have not got anything to solve that problem, do you know anything about it? Thanks in advance

[andreybagrichuk]

Thank U a lot for amazing material man !!!

[mrhmakes]

Thank you! very informative! But do you by chance have something similar but with post done in davinci resolve? Am curious as to how that might breakdown

[felixmagnusson]

Have you managed to get stencil layers to work in UE 5.1? I've been trying every way I can think of but it just wont output any alpha...

[timmarriott]

Thanks so much for this, tiedtke. A couple of questions I'm hoping you can answer. I tried your method to get a depth pass, but the layer has no information in my compositing app. Any idea why that may be?

Secondly, when I work in Cinema4D, I'm able to render beauty passes for each separate light that I have in my scene using the light group feature. Is this workflow possible in UE5? I'm looking for a way to render what every light contributes to the beauty, then rebuilding the beauty in post with much greater control over the lighting. Any thoughts on how to do that?

[niclasfangorn]

Great tutorial!
I have a question regarding "Linear color space only" vs "Allow through tonemapper". Should I always use linear if I want to do color adjustments in post or what's the reason? In other tutorials on the topic of enable alpha channel support they use "Allow through tonemapper" but never comments on why.

[Midz]

Great video! All of my post process materials are rendering, so they are definitely active, but the renders are always black. Any ideas?

[marklavania]

Quite insightful. Thanks for sharing your knowledge. Subscribing!

[afssai]

Hey I tried to use the layers in ue5.1 but nothing happens. I drag the mesh inside the layer panel and release and nothing. Can it be any preference setting that I am not aware of?

[davidratajczak]

Hello, I do have a VFX oriented question : is there a way to remove a sky from a render so we can replace it in comp with a matte painting instead ? Like keeping everything we see in Unreal Viewport, including atmospherics, but with an alpha channel for the sky ? Important thing : forest environment : already tried cryptomattes but I do have super annoying artifacts around the leaves
Thanks a lot

[ThrillDaWill]

They've changed how layers work, this doesnt seem to work anymore. is there a work around for 5.2, or 5.3?

[lifeartstudios]

is this only for cinematic stuff? Can I use this like unity render queues? I'm working in the mobile LDR space so I have no post process, no depth stencil, no distance fields, etc.
I'm trying to do some perspective-based masking, and made some progress by hijacking single layer water's two pass opaque shader, but then translucency renders on top of that so it mess up the depth. IE: Can I use this to change the render order?

[cryptsFX]

Is there anyway around the nanite issue without disabling nanite?

[denisann]

Hello!
If I have several folders with different lights, then how can I hide some of them during rendering?

[rendered_useless]

Please could you help

I'm trying to do this process in Unreal 5.2 but it doesn't seem to be working (we tried on two different systems)

When dragging and dropping actors into the layers panel nothing happens, also when we right click in the layers panel nothing happens - no dropdowns or menus or anything

Thank you!

[shivangipriya]

is there difference between Layers and Data Layers? thank you