Rendering Compositions

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.

This section shows different rendering methods:

To render a composition:

Go to the File menu and click Render or click Alt+R. The Render dialog will display.
Click the Select All or Deslect All button to enable or disable rendering for all outputs.
Click the Output button to enable or disable the render for an individual output.
Click the Edit button to map the UI for this node. This will dismiss the Render dialog.
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.
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.
Set the Start and End values to set the start and end frames for this render.
Click the Reset button if you wish to modify the Start and End frames to include frames of all the currently selected outputs.
Finally, click the Start button to begin rendering, or click the Cancel button.

To display the list of background tasks:

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

(a) Number of ongoing render tasks

Rendering over a Network

The Render Actions tab in the Project Preferences dialog allows you to edit existing render actions, and define new ones. To define a new render action, right-click in the render actions browser at left, and select "New". Select an existing render action to edit it. Render actions use variables, or tokens, that are replaced with actual values when the action is run.

Variable	Description
<InstallDir>	Composite root installation folder.
<BgTaskDir>	Points to the \resources\bgTasks folder of the Composite installation.
<PythonExec>	Points to the Python executable used by Composite.
<SharedDataDir>	Folder on the network where shared data files are stored.
<DestinationPath>	The destination folder specified in the current project's Rendered settings.
<CurrentUser>	The current user.
<CurrentProject>	The current project.
<CompositionPath>	The path to the current composition.
<ProjectFolder>	The path of the current project.
<Name>	The current composition name.
<Date>	The current date.
<Time>	The current time.
<FilenamePattern>	The file name pattern specified in the current project's Rendered settings.
<Custom>	The custom string associated with the current composition.
<FrameNo>	The current frame number (only available in the file name Rendered setting).
<NbFrames>	The number of frames in the current composition.
<StartFrame>	The start frame index for the current composition.
<EndFrame>	The end frame index for the current composition.
<RenderedResult>	The current rendered result name.

For network rendering:

Ensure Composite is installed in the same path on every workstation that is part of the render farm, for example: C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Autodesk Composite 2011\Composite\
Ensure the rendering application is installed on every workstation that is part of the render farm.
Note If you are using the Autodesk Backburner network rendering application, ensure that one Backburner Manager is running on one workstation and one Backburner Server is running on each workstation that is part of the render farm. In addition, each Backburner Server should be connected to the Backburner Manager.

Rendering to Wiretap

The Wiretap protocol allows some degree of data exchange between Autodesk Composite and Autodesk editing and effects products, such as Autodesk Smoke ®, and Autodesk Flame®. In a facility where Composite is used with one of these Wiretap-compatible products, rendering to Wiretap is an easy way for you to quickly make available the rendered result of a composition to the Flame or Smoke user.

To set the Wiretap mode for new compositions:

In the menu bar, select Edit > Project Preferences.
In the Project Preferences window, select the Render tab.
Click the Wiretap button.
In the text field next to the Wiretap button, do one of the following:
- Type in the path.
- Using the File Browser, navigate to a Wiretap folder, right-click the item in the right pane, and select Copy Path. Paste the contents in the Wiretap field (Ctrl + V for Windows and Linux or Cmd + V for Mac OS).
- Using the File Browser, navigate to a Wiretap folder, select the path in the browser path text field, copy it (Ctrl + C for Windows and Linux or Cmd + C for Mac OS), and then paste it in the Wiretap field (Ctrl + V for Windows and Linux or Cmd + V for Mac OS). Either one of the following forms are acceptable:
- Wiretap:<servername>/…
  or
- <servername>/…
The server specified corresponds generally to an IFFFS server. In the text field, the prefix “Wiretap:” is stripped off if present, because it is implicit. For IFFFS, the path must specify a writable folder, which is either a library or a reel. For example: Wiretap:/belgium/stonefs/myProject/myLibrary/myReel/. The trailing slash is optional.

You can also set Wiretap rendering on existing compositions, for each output. Select an output node in the composition, and click on the Render tab in the UI. The same Wiretap controls as described above are available for the output.

NoteIf the clip is not rendering to Wiretap, it may be for one of the following reasons:

The Wiretap server on the destination host is down.
The destination folder is not a library or a reel.
The library is already opened by a Smoke or Flame user on the remote machine which will only allow the read only mode.
A composition name contains parentheses.

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