You can render a composition at any time, to save the final output of a composition. When you render a composition, you choose the output(s) you wish to render, and the way in which they will be rendered, which is called the render action, as either the foreground or one of the many background actions. A progress bar displays the rendering of frames for all outputs. The outputs are rendered in parallel, one frame index after another alternating between each output. This can speed up the rendering process because some intermediate results are reused.

To render a composition:

1. Go to the File menu and click Render or click Alt+R. The Render dialog will display.

   

2. Click the Select All or Deslect All button to enable or disable rendering for all outputs.
3. Click the Output button to enable or disable the render for an individual output.
4. Click the Edit button to map the UI for this node. This will dismiss the Render dialog.
5. Click the Action button to select the way in which you want to render your composition. By default, Composite has three render actions, to the foreground, background or backburner.

   

   Foreground will perform the render while blocking further interaction with the Composite UI. It will only use the local machine, but is the fastest single-machine rendering option. Its disadvantage is that you cannot use Composite while rendering proceeds.

   Background will also perform the render on the local machine, but allows you to continue using Composite during rendering. It is slower than Foreground rendering.

   Backburner dispatches rendering to Autodesk Backburner(TM), Autodesk's distributed network rendering solution. As for Background rendering, you can use Composite while rendering proceeds. When you choose Background or Backburner rendering, the render is done on a copy of the composition: modifying the composition while it renders will not affect the result of the rendering.

6. Click the Render Actions button to dismiss the Render dialog, and display the Render Actions tab in the Project Preferences dialog. This allows you to edit the existing render actions, or define new ones.
7. Set the Start and End values to set the start and end frames for this render.
8. Click the Reset button if you wish to modify the Start and End frames to include frames of all the currently selected outputs.
9. Finally, click the Start button to begin rendering, or click the Cancel button.

To display the list of background tasks:

1. In the taskbar, click the number representing the number of ongoing render tasks.

   

   (a) Number of ongoing render tasks