Robot Render is A GUI that facilitates After Effects comp rendering automation.
Robot Render uses the After Effects command line renderer to render a queue of After Effects compositions. It is built for After Effects compositions using an external CSV file to dynamically update fields within its compositions. Using a secondary file containing variations, it will update the base CSV file before rendering each variation.
How to use
(The sample files included with the download are helpful)
Step 1
Set up your Afte Effects comp to use a CSV file as the data source. The link below explains this really well. Before running Robot Render, ensure all your linking works, and you can do a single test render from within the After Effects render queue.
Step 2
Create a CSV file with the same setup as your original settings file but with extra rows containing all the file variations you would like.
Step 3
Fire up Render Robot and fill in the information below.
After Effects Project
This should point to your base After Effects file.
Project Settings File
This is the base CSV file that you created and tested in Step 1
Variations File
This is the file that you created in Step 2. This can be a local CSV file or point to an online URL. Note that the online URL must be a CSV file. See below for instructions on how to create a CSV URL for a Google Sheet.
After Effects Composition
This is the name of the composition within your After Effects file. You can either enter the name manually or have a column in your variations file that lists the composition name. This allows you to render more than one composition in one run.
Output folder
This should point to where you would like your final renders.
File Naming
The first option lets you create a programmatically generated name for each file. Note that the extension does not get detected from the output module, so it will be created as selected.
The second option lets you use a column in your variations file to set the file name.
Output Module
This field uses a column in your variations file to set the After Effects Output Module with which the file will be rendered.
After Effects Folder
This field should point to the location of your base After Effects Installation. It should be the folder that contains the 'aerender.exe' file.
Creating an online CSV link for Google Sheets.
Within your Google Sheet, select File > Share > Publish to Web
Staying in the 'Link' tab, select the name of your Sheet, and select the option 'Comma-separated values (.csv)'
Select 'Publish'
You will be given a URL ending with '&output=csv.'