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Input needed on new After Effects Render Management Software
Hi everybody,
I’ve been posting here for a pretty long time now, and I’ve come to really value the opinions of many people on this forum. I’ve recently been working on a render management program for 3d artists/compositors, and I have a description of it below. Below the description, I have a few questions I would like to ask you all, so I can have your input as I finalize this software.Alright, I’ve recently been creating a standalone render management program to work with After Effects, and other 3d and compositing software. This is a standalone piece of software that can be thought of as a “universal render queue”, in that it can render more than After Effects Comps. As of now, this application can render AE Comps, and Maya scenes. However, I am working on adding support for Combustion, Lightwave, and other applications. Also, this program has the option to render After Effects comps faster than usual if you have a multiprocessor machine. This is done by launching multiple background instances of aerender much like Gridiron’s Nucleo product (great plug in by the way). Additionally, the program has 2 other useful features. It has the option to send emails out to the user periodically during the render process, as each render completes. Lastly, it has the option to shutdown the computer when all the renders in the queue are finished.
While this is a standalone app, not a plug in, I plan having tight integration with After Effects itself. From After Effects, the user will simply be able to run a script called “Submit to Render Manager,” to place the entire After Effects render queue into the Render Management software. The user can then render out the render queue and continue to work in AE.
Alright, here are the questions I have for you:
– What apps (besides AE and Maya) would you like to see supported?
– Is there anyone who would want the ability to write custom plug ins to support other software?
– How important is a feature like Gridiron Nucleo’s “commit to disk” to you?
– Any good ideas on what to name this thing? 🙂
– What other features would you like to see?Lastly, the initial version of this will probably be freeware, and will definitely be Windows only. However, I am definetly planning on creating a mac version in the near future, provided people are interested in this software. Below are some links to screenshots of the software.
Screenshot 1
Screenshot 2
Screenshot 3Thanks everybody!
~Colin Braley
email me at cbraley AT vt DOT edu -
2 Replies
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sounds a lot like smedge, rush, DrQueue, etc
who is that masked man…
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[rendernyc] “sounds a lot like smedge, rush, DrQueue, etc”
Yes, it is similar to Rush, Smedge etc. However, this app is not intended to be used for network rendering, but rather for managing rendering on a single machine. If you wanted, you could use this app to do network rendering, but that is not what it was designed for. It IS intended to be an easy to use, yet customizable, way for a user on a single machine to manage multiple renders from different apps. Also, unlike Smedge, Rush, etc. this app is able to launch multiple instances of AE to speed up rendering. Lastly, this program is able to notify you of render progress via email and shutdown when finished, which many other render managers can’t do.
Overall, I believe that many programs like Rush can be overkill for a single user, especially someone who is not very technically minded. They can be tough to learn and have features that go unused by the average user. On the other hand, these types of programs are great for large studios with a big render farm and someone who can devote the time to learn these apps.~Colin
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