By default, each layer of a scene is imported into a different render layer composition. For greater compositing freedom and to set expressions, you must have all the dependency graphs of each layer in one scene composition.

To merge layers during import, click the Merge button in the Pre-Compositing Import Options dialog box. The following shows what a scene composition would look like after merging layers. Notice that each layer is represented by the same dependency graph because they all use the same default template.

You can also specify a template to handle all passes from all layers—see Using Pre-Compositing Templates.

You can replace a link node by the content of its linked composition.

To merge in a composition:

1. In the Schematic view, right-click a Link Image node and select Merge and one of the following:
   • Non-Recursive: Bring in one level of the linked composition.
   • Recursive: Apply the merge recursively on all link nodes found in the linked composition version.
   • Recursive Except Footage: Stop recursion at footage compositions.