Drag a finished render output into project panel

[Filip26812379jdvc]

Hi,

I find myself rendering (prerendering) a lot of comps and then reusing the ready renders just to speed up my wrkflow.

It would be great if after a finished render we could just select a finished render job and drag it into the project panel - this would result in importing the file we that the selected job rendered.

If the job had two outputsm draggig the job imports both of them, dragging a selected job output would import just that output 🙂

[TimKurkoski]

Hi @Filip26812379jdvc ,

Thank you for filing this idea. What you describe is already possible.

You can import a completed item from the Render Queue to the project by one of two ways:

• Click and drag on the output module for the item from the Render Queue to the Project panel. Note that you need to click on the words "Output Module" to initiate the drag. You can also multi-select output modules using the Shift or Command/CTRL keys to drag multiple items.
• In the Output Module Settings dialog, set the Post-Render Action item to Import. More information on post-render actions is here: https://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/using/basics-rendering-exporting.html#post_render_actions

If there is further functionality you'd like to see with this, please leave a comment so we can understand how you'd like it to work.

[Filip26812379jdvc]

Oh wow, thanks.

I was dragging by the Output to label or the file path label - didn't think to drag the Output module Label 🙂

[Filip26812379jdvc]

Ok please make it a little better.

Right now it's a little too smart for its own good.

If the job is finished, it imports the render, if the job is not finished (not rendered yet) it imports an empty place holder - not even checking if the rendered sequence exists or not.

I have a habit of saving files just before hitting render, this way I alway have render jobs set up and ready if I need to rerender a comp at a later time.

Also if you render your project with a background renderer you end up with unchecked jobs, but still unfinished - for the same reason as above, so you can easily render them again.

So currently, even though the jobs have actually been rendered, just because their current state in the project says that they are fresh, when I drag the Output Module of a job to the Project Panel I get an ampty placeholder instead of the rendered sequence that is already on disk.

Please change the drag action to always import the targeted render file from disk. If and ONLY if that file does not exist - import the empty placeholder file.