In this After Effects Fundamentals lesson, you'll learn how to export (render, in After Effects language) your animation as a video file that can be played outside of After Effects.
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Rendering an animation can take anywhere from a few seconds to hours. The time it takes to render depends on:
So, it's worthwhile to check a few things before you render, to get it right! Here are a few things to check:
Make sure your composition is trimmed to the length you want it. Check for layers that end too soon or extra time with nothing going on.
To adjust the duration of your animation, go to Composition Settings (Composition > Composition Settings or ⌘/Ctrl K).
After Effects will only render the work area of your composition. The work area is the gray bar across the top of the timeline with blue bookends.
To adjust the work area:
To trim your composition to the work area, right click on the gray bar that is the work area then choose Trim Comp to Work Area.
If you're using effects or motion blur, make sure they are turned on. Also make sure that any layers that need to have continuously rasterize turned on do. Continuously rasterize is the sun icon on the layer in the timeline. This makes vector layers (like from Adobe Illustrator) sharp even when scaled or zoomed in on. More on that here.
The first step to render a composition is to add it to the Render Queue. This is just a tab on the timeline that contains a list of things that have been rendered and that will be rendered.
There are a few ways to add a composition to the Render Queue. First, have the composition you want to render open in the timeline OR selected in the Project panel. Then, do one of these:
control ⌘ M -or- shift ⌘ /
Ctrl alt M -or- shift Ctrl /
You can render multiple comps at once (see below), but let's not get ahead of ourselves.
If you change your mind and need to delete something from the Render Queue, just select it and hit the delete/backspace key.
By default, the Render Settings are set to Best Settings. I hardly ever change this.
If you want to create a low quality, quick-to-render, and small file size draft of your animation, you can adjust these settings. To do this, click the blue text that says "Best Settings" and in the pop-up window, lower the Resolution (or try out adjusting other settings).
Note: The Resolution in the Render Settings pop-up window is for the rendered video file. The Resolution in the Composition Viewer is just for previewing your animation in AE, so this setting doesn't matter when it comes to rendering.
This is the file format of the video file you're about to render.
Most of the time, you'll probably want to use one of the templates that's already set up. To access these templates, click the down arrow next to Output Module.
Here are the render templates you'll most likely need:
.mp4
.mov
.mov
Note that I'm using a Mac, so options on a PC might be slightly different.
The H.264 format (.mp4) is new in After Effects 2023. If you're using an older version, you'll need to use Media Encoder to render a .mp4.
If you need to adjust specific settings, click on the blue text to access this pop-up window:
The alpha channel refers to transparency. So, when you render a file "with alpha" it will be transparent wherever there is transparency in your composition.
If you render a format that doens't support alpha channels/transparency, and you have transparency in your composition, you will see the color set as the Background Color in the Composition settings in those areas.
This is where you decide where to save the video file. Click the blue text then navigate to where you want to save the file. More on file organization here.
Once you've adjusted any settings and decided where to save the video file, just hit the render button. Or, the keyboard shortcut is return/enter.
If you want to get up from the computer as you wait for AE to render, but want to know when it's done, check the box in the bottom right corner labeled "Notify when queue completes". In order to get these notifications, you'll need to download the Creative Cloud app on your phone, sign in, and enable notifications.
Note that this feature is only available in the After Effects 2022 release and later.
To speed up your render, hit the caps lock key to disable the preview from playing in After Effects.
Compositions from After Effects can also be rendered in a separate application (included in Creative Cloud), called Media Encoder. The benefit of using Media Encoder is that it frees up After Effects so you can continue working. There are also some additional format options (like .gif) that After Effects doesn't have.
There are a few ways to add a composition to Media Encoder:
Once your comp/s are added to Media Encoder, you can adjust the format of the file it will render by clicking on the blue text under Format or Preset.
Choose where to save the file under Output File. If you don't change this, it will create a folder named something along the lines of YourAfterEffectsProjectFileName_AME and it will put this folder next to your AE project file, wherever that's saved. The rendered file will go in this folder.
Click the green triangle to start rendering.
If you have a video file, for example, let's say a .mov file, that you want to convert to another format, let's say a .mp4, you can drag the video file into Media Encoder's queue. Then just adjust the format or preset to render a .mp4 (in this example).
It's possible to render multiple compositions at once (well, technically one at a time, but with one click of the "render" button). This is possible in After Effects and Media Encoder.
In the Project panel, select all the compositions you want to render. Then add them to the Render Queue or the Media Encoder Render Queue in any of the usual ways...as a reminder:
Once your comps are in the Render Queue, you can change the render template on multiple compositions at once if they're all selected.
Then, hit the render button and all comps will be rendered!
If you need to render a bunch of comps, first add just one comp to the Render Queue. Choose where you want to save the file. Now you any comps that you add to the Render Queue will automatically be set to save in that same location, so you don't have to manually change this on every comp.
If you need a .mov and .mp4, for example, of the same comp, you can render both at once. First, add the comp to the Render Queue as usual. In the Render Queue, click the + icon on the comp in the queue. Now you can change the format and/or save location of the two copies of this comp.
In the next lesson, you'll learn three ways to render your After Effects animations as .gif files that automatically play and can loop forever on the web.
