After Effects render output not found

Deadline
1

We are trying to render a test video on the new AWS managed deployment of after effects released here is February 2025.

The job renders perfectly but we can not get it to find the output. For now we hardcoded all params just to simplify testing.

Here is our Job description:

specificationVersion: 'jobtemplate-2023-09'
name: AfterEffectsRender
description: "A Job that renders an After Effects project from S3."

parameterDefinitions:
  - name: SceneFile
    type: PATH
    objectType: FILE
    description: "Path to the After Effects project file."

  - name: OutputDir
    type: PATH
    objectType: DIRECTORY
    dataFlow: OUT
    default: "./output"
    description: "This directory contains the output for all steps."
    
  - name: CompositionName
    type: STRING
    description: "The root composition name in After Effects."

steps:
  - name: RenderAE
    script:
      actions:
        onRun:
          command: bash
          args:
            - "-c"
            - "set -euo pipefail; aerender -project '{{Param.SceneFile}}' -comp '{{Param.CompositionName}}' -output '{{Param.OutputDir}}\\test.mp4'"
    hostRequirements:
      attributes:
        - name: attr.worker.os.family
          anyOf:
            - windows

Here is the log result:

2025/02/22 07:41:07+01:00 PROGRESS:  0;00;06;00 (181): 0 Seconds
2025/02/22 07:41:09+01:00 PROGRESS:  2/22/2025 6:41:09 AM: Finished composition "test".
2025/02/22 07:41:09+01:00  
2025/02/22 07:41:09+01:00  
2025/02/22 07:41:09+01:00 PROGRESS:  Total Time Elapsed: 9 Seconds
2025/02/22 07:41:09+01:00 Render completed.
2025/02/22 07:41:10+01:00 Process pid 4628 exited with code: 0 (unsigned) / 0x0 (hex)
2025/02/22 07:41:10+01:00 ----------------------------------------------
2025/02/22 07:41:10+01:00 Uploading output files to Job Attachments
2025/02/22 07:41:10+01:00 ----------------------------------------------
2025/02/22 07:41:10+01:00 Started syncing outputs using Job Attachments
2025/02/22 07:41:10+01:00 Found 0 files (Output directory C:\ProgramData\Amazon\OpenJD\session-7d81e8597349456a90ccd71ee95cc791a_n2hmyz\assetroot-3001979e3455f7a084d3\test.mp4 does not exist.)
2025/02/22 07:41:10+01:00 Summary Statistics for file uploads:
Processed 0 files totaling 0.0 B.
Skipped re-processing 0 files totaling 0.0 B.
Total processing time of 0.0 seconds at 0.0 B/s.

2025/02/22 07:41:10+01:00 Finished syncing outputs using Job Attachments
2

Hey - i think there’s potentially two issues coming up here. First, it looks like you passed in the full path to the output file test.mp4 into OutputDir? That’s expecting a folder that will be scanned for any outputs created during the job execution that will then be uploaded back to S3. The other thing would be ensuring the directory exists so you also need to add a “mkdir {{Param.OutputDir}}”

We also launched a major update to the integrated submitter for AE that you may want to try out as well - details AWS Deadline Cloud now supports Adobe After Effects in Service-Managed Fleets - AWS