RenderQueue+: A handy After Effects workflow utility for rendering, reviewing, and managing render outputs.
RenderQueue+ adds output versioning, background rendering, relative output paths, image-sequence review and editing utilities to your After Effects toolset. And more!
The panel loosely integrates with Shotgun's RV that can be used for reviewing your output. Using FFmpeg, it automatically generates movies from your sequence outputs giving you a wider gamut to interact and review your rendered image-sequences.
- The script does not support Mac OS at the moment..
- The versioning pattern is hard-coded and there's no way to customize as things stand. I hope to add custom templates in the future
- FFmpeg output could do with presets
- Panel has been tested but bugs are possible
Place both the RenderQueue+.jsx file and the RenderQueuePlus folder into After Effect's ScriptUI Panels folder.
ScriptUI Panels\RenderQueue+.jsxb
ScriptUI Panels\RenderQueuePlus\
It's located usually here (replace [Your Version] with the After Effects version you have):
C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe After Effects [Your Version]\Support Files\Scripts\ScriptUI Panels
After restarting After Effects you should see a 'RenderQueue+.jsx' menu-item at the bottom of the 'Window' menu.
RenderQueue+ can render output modules in the background so you don't have to stop work to wait for renders to complete. You can also make a batch file that can be launched across multiple computers on a network. This might sometimes be handy for small studios or individuals where a render-farm solution is not available.
You can enable versioning for any of your output modules by setting 'Version Control' (from the 'Versions' drop-down menu). You have options to increment and reset the version, and also, to toggle between the existing versions via the drop-down menu. This can be handy when comparing revisions, or generally, to keep things neat and tidy.
RenderQueue+ can set your output paths to be relative to the current project. For example, let's assume your project files are in the comps folder, and we want the renders to be placed in the folder called renders in the same folder as the comps folder.
C:/work/comps/My After Effects Project.aep
C:/work/renders/
We can point to the renders folder by entering the following in Settings:
././renders
The output path will be set once we select 'Set Version Control' for the item. Simple, albeit arguably somewhat limited in its current form.
If you're a Shotgun/RV user you can call RV from the RenderQueue+ to review your rendered files.
You can delete rendered images (or movies) from the app via the RenderQueue+'s Frame Manager. Here you can filter your files by sequence patterns, eg. entering in the filter box '1-20, 30-40' will display only frames 1-20 and 30-40. This makes it easy to remove specific image-ranges if you need to re-render only a section of your comp.
The panel automatically archives a copy of your comp when you start a render: this means, you can always refer back to the project used to render a given version.
The output composition names are automatically picked-up and used in the name of the render files. Make sure they have sensible names and contain no special characters (or at least bear in mind, these will be removed from the output name).
This might sound strange, but the tool always renders the entirety of your output comp.
Hence, if your comp starts at frame 1, and finishes at frame 350, it will render all the frames between and including 1 and 350. This is enforced as a matter of principle to keep things, but chiefly, the author of this script organised. It is sometimes nice to have restrictions and it's better to be tidy and to make sure the output comp is set-up correctly.
If you delete frames from an existing sequence of images, those frames will automatically be re-rendered (the panel automatically sets sequences to skip existing files when you set Version Control). This allows you to re-render ranges, and specific frames too. RenderQueue+ comes with a frame manager to help you delete image ranges, and/or specific frames straight from After Effects.
Copyright (c) 2018 Gergely Wootsch [email protected] http://gergely-wotsch.com
http://gergely-wootsch.com/renderqueueplus [email protected]