Creating NRG Multiband TIF from single bands using QGIS?

Question

I'm attempting to take 3 single bands (NIR, Red, and Green) and turn them into a single multiband tif image.

Someone working on the images was able to take this image which I merged...

And then using QGIS remove the transparency bands and turn it into this image...

Unfortuantely, the person that was able to complete this is not able to help us get to the final product, so I've been trying to find out how to merge single bands into the final product and have it come our looking like a normal CIR image.

I have each band processed separately without the transparency (using Pix4D) and have tried merging those, but still continue to get an image that looks nothing like the second image above. I need to be able to get these single bands into the multiband in NRG order.

EDIT: I followed Lukes advice below and did the following:

Raster -> Miscellaneous -> Build Virtual Raster, used visible raster layers (to make sure they were in order with NIR at top of layers, then Red, then Green.) Then set the output file and used separate to make sure the layers would stay as separate bands.

When I hit Ok, this error came up.

Pretty sure that was unrelated, but then the final image it created looked like this:

Then I did this path:

Raster menu -> Conversion -> Translate (Convert Format)...

Which was set up like this:

Then when I hit Ok, it came up with an image that looks like this: (The error didn't happen this time. Sweet!)

Still don't understand why my image looks so different from the one he created. I'm testing the upload now.

EDIT 2:

Here are the properties for the correct image that the other guy was able to create :

And here are the properties to my image after I've made it:

Why do my properties have a "Gray" Band at the top? Each of them should be coming through as color bands since it's NIR, Red, and Green, right?

EDIT 3 : Here is the txt of the VRT that I've created with my single bands.

<VRTDataset rasterXSize="2720" rasterYSize="2592">
  <SRS>PROJCS["WGS 84 / UTM zone 11N",GEOGCS["WGS 84",DATUM["WGS_1984",SPHEROID["WGS 84",6378137,298.257223563,AUTHORITY["EPSG","7030"]],AUTHORITY["EPSG","6326"]],PRIMEM["Greenwich",0,AUTHORITY["EPSG","8901"]],UNIT["degree",0.0174532925199433,AUTHORITY["EPSG","9122"]],AUTHORITY["EPSG","4326"]],PROJECTION["Transverse_Mercator"],PARAMETER["latitude_of_origin",0],PARAMETER["central_meridian",-117],PARAMETER["scale_factor",0.9996],PARAMETER["false_easting",500000],PARAMETER["false_northing",0],UNIT["metre",1,AUTHORITY["EPSG","9001"]],AXIS["Easting",EAST],AXIS["Northing",NORTH],AUTHORITY["EPSG","32611"]]</SRS>
  <GeoTransform> 3.5246044199000002e+005, 4.3333333333333335e-001, 0.0000000000000000e+000, 5.1834971052700002e+006, 0.0000000000000000e+000,-4.3333333333333335e-001</GeoTransform>
  <VRTRasterBand dataType="UInt16" band="1">
    <NoDataValue>-10000</NoDataValue>
    <ComplexSource>
      <SourceFilename relativeToVRT="0">A:/UpAngle eBee Flights/Crop Production Services/9.13.16 CPS Connell Johnson/Sequioa Images/Single Band Try/Merged 30cm/NO transparency/cps 6-14 nir_mosaic_nir.tif</SourceFilename>
      <SourceBand>1</SourceBand>
      <SourceProperties RasterXSize="3756" RasterYSize="3711" DataType="UInt16" BlockXSize="256" BlockYSize="256" />
      <SrcRect xOff="0" yOff="0" xSize="3756" ySize="3711" />
      <DstRect xOff="8.91590769237015" yOff="0" xSize="2600.30769230769" ySize="2569.15384615385" />
      <NODATA>-10000</NODATA>
    </ComplexSource>
  </VRTRasterBand>
  <VRTRasterBand dataType="UInt16" band="2">
    <NoDataValue>-10000</NoDataValue>
    <ComplexSource>
      <SourceFilename relativeToVRT="0">A:/UpAngle eBee Flights/Crop Production Services/9.13.16 CPS Connell Johnson/Sequioa Images/Single Band Try/Merged 30cm/NO transparency/cps 6-14 red_mosaic_red.tif</SourceFilename>
      <SourceBand>1</SourceBand>
      <SourceProperties RasterXSize="2357" RasterYSize="2239" DataType="UInt16" BlockXSize="256" BlockYSize="256" />
      <SrcRect xOff="0" yOff="0" xSize="2357" ySize="2239" />
      <DstRect xOff="0" yOff="8.97618461543551" xSize="2719.61538461538" ySize="2583.46153846154" />
      <NODATA>-10000</NODATA>
    </ComplexSource>
  </VRTRasterBand>
  <VRTRasterBand dataType="UInt16" band="3">
    <NoDataValue>-10000</NoDataValue>
    <ComplexSource>
      <SourceFilename relativeToVRT="0">A:/UpAngle eBee Flights/Crop Production Services/9.13.16 CPS Connell Johnson/Sequioa Images/Single Band Try/Merged 30cm/NO transparency/cps 6-14 green_mosaic_green.tif</SourceFilename>
      <SourceBand>1</SourceBand>
      <SourceProperties RasterXSize="2338" RasterYSize="2204" DataType="UInt16" BlockXSize="256" BlockYSize="256" />
      <SrcRect xOff="0" yOff="0" xSize="2338" ySize="2204" />
      <DstRect xOff="0.423092307666173" yOff="17.198976921634" xSize="2697.69230769231" ySize="2543.07692307692" />
      <NODATA>-10000</NODATA>
    </ComplexSource>
  </VRTRasterBand>
</VRTDataset>

Answer 1

In QGIS:

• Raster menu -> Miscellaneous -> Build Virtual Raster (Catalog)...
• Ensure the "Separate" option is ticked so each raster is put into a separate band
• Raster menu -> Conversion -> Translate (Convert Format)...
• Output to GeoTIFF

Command-line GDAL:

• gdalbuildvrt -separate NRG.vrt NIR.tif RED.tif GREEN.tif
• gdal_translate NRG.vrt NRG.tif

Note there are a few other options you could play around with, to set nodata values, compress the output, define projection etc.

Here's some screenshots. Note: output VRT and tif look the same as the original RGB tif. Also note that the order of the input rasters is important when building the VRT.