Rendering

Hosts and rendering

MographJailed can find and drive After Effects and Cinema 4D (2024 or newer) for renders. It never edits your projects or scenes.

host.detect

mj host.detect

Reports macOS version and chip, GPU and Metal support, whether you are at the console session, and each installed host: version, whether it is complete, whether it is supported (2024+), the render CLIs found, and whether Redshift is installed. Licensing is shown as unverified; it is only observed when a host actually runs.

Hosts are found only in /Applications as Adobe After Effects <year> and Maxon Cinema 4D <year>. Requests cannot name a host path.

ae.render and c4d.render

mj ae.render path=/work/hero.aep target="Main Comp" output=/work/renders label=hero range=0-119
mj c4d.render path=/work/logo.c4d output=/work/renders label=logo range=0-95 target="Hero Take"

• output must be an existing local folder. Each render gets its own new folder, <label>.<UTC time>, and never reuses one.
• Frames are PNG sequences. After Effects is forced to PNG output; Cinema 4D uses the scene's own renderer (Redshift or Physical) and only overrides the image path and format.
• range is START-END, inclusive. timeoutSeconds (10-86400, default 3600) is a hard limit. version picks a host year if you have several.
• After Effects is launched fresh (never reusing a running copy), and the project is closed without saving.

The receipt

render.json in the render folder records the host and version, the exact command, frames rendered against frames expected, SHA-256 of the first and last frame, and the source file's SHA-256 before and after (source.unchanged must be true). render.log holds the host's output. Failed renders get receipts too.

Result codes: RENDER_FAILED, RENDER_INCOMPLETE (frames missing), RENDER_TIMEOUT, RENDER_BUSY, LICENCE_NOT_CONFIGURED.

One at a time

Renders run one at a time per Mac, because they share one GPU and one licence. A second request while one is running returns RENDER_BUSY. A lock left by a crashed run is cleared automatically.

Cinema 4D licensing

Cinema 4D's command-line tools ask which licence method to use the first time they run. MographJailed never answers that prompt: it stops the host and reports LICENCE_NOT_CONFIGURED. Run Cinema 4D's command line once by hand to set licensing up, then try again.

After rendering

Rendered folders feed straight into Frame Tools: loop.seams and golden.check work on them as they are.