Render, Email, Incremental Save and Shutdown
Based on a request over at http://creativecow.com I joined 2 scripts that come with After Effects and added the Shutdown command when it’s all done.
This script will render all the items in your render queue, send you an email to let you know the render is done, save an incremental version of your project and shutdown the machine. On Mac you can choose to have the machine sleep instead of shutdown.
**This script should be installed in the same folder as the email_methods.jsx and email_setup.jsx scripts that ship with After Effects. Normally this place is in the Scripts folder inside the After Effects application folder.
Download: Render_Email_Save_Shutdown.jsx
If you just want to Render and Shutdown (or render and sleep) based on a request over at mograph.net Chris Kelley was kind enough to update the script.
Download: Render_Save_Shutdown.jsx
version history:
07/08 added Render and shutdown only version
06/08 1.02 added mac sleep option
02/08 1.01 added windows shutdown
02/08 1.0 initial release mac only shutdown



there is an easy way to shutdown computers via the cmd in windows:
shutdown -s -t 30 -c “Render is complete, shutting down… use shutdown -a to cancel”
that cmd will now wait for 30 sec and if you wan to cancel just type:
shutdown -a
(press windowskey+r and write that)
Thanks for that Frank, but in my testing so far that doesn’t work reliably on every machine even though they are all running the same WinXP SP2. I just updated the script to allow easy configuration of the shutdown command in case you want to download the freeware utility that is mentioned on this webpage: http://www.aumha.org/win5/a/shutcut.php
But in the mean time I’ve set the default to be what you suggest.
Someone pointed out that you can easily have the script send you an SMS text message. You can sign up over at https://www1.teleflip.com/ and have the email converted to an SMS so you can be notified on your mobile phone in case you don’t have access to email
do you guys know how to change the script to: “Render, (Email,) Incremental Save and SLEEP” on a mac (osx 10.5)??
SLEEP instead of SHUTDOWN. that would be awesome.
thanks for the great scripts, benson
Just added the option to sleep on mac. Re-download the script to get the new version.
I have a problem with the email lscript on my mac, i always get ‘Mail not sent’ ‘null is not an object’ error, whether i use this script or the email render script that comes with afx.
Any help much appreciated