The concept for controlling After Effects rendering is similar to creating a batch export of objects. To effectively control After Effects, you need to use a tasklist. For example, suppose you want to render frames 0 to 250 of an After Effects file named aetest.aep. This file has one comp (Comp1). In your render farm, 10 servers are available to use for rendering. So the tasklist is defined in a tab-delimited file with three columns: The first column is used as the taskname, –taskname 1; the second column used is referred to as %tp2; and the third column is %tp3. The last two parameters are passed as arguments for the start and end frame for aerender.exe.
cmdjob –jobname “after effects test” –manager managername –taskfile c:\aejobs\tasklist.txt –taskname 1 c:\ae6.5\aerender.exe –project c:\aejobs\aetest.aep –comp “comp1” –s %tp2 –e %tp3
The tasklist.txt file:
| frames 0-24 | 0 | 24 |
| frames 25-49 | 25 | 49 |
| frames 50-74 | 50 | 74 |
| frames 75-99 | 75 | 99 |
| frames 100-124 | 100 | 124 |
| frames 125-149 | 125 | 149 |
| frames 150-174 | 150 | 174 |
| frames 175-199 | 175 | 199 |
| frames 200-224 | 200 | 224 |
| frames 225-250 | 225 | 250 |