Lloyd Alvarez is a top-notch After Effects user who has also developed a handful of very useful scripts for the program. One of his most popular is BG Renderer, which launches instances of After Effects in the background to render compositions while you continue to work in the foreground. Lloyd just announced BG Renderer 2.0 with After Effects CS5 compatibility, plus a whole host of new features.
BG Renderer has now been split into two versions: Basic ($4.99), a streamlined version that just performs background rendering, and Pro ($19.99), that allows you to “set prefs for the render, the pro version offer the very powerful post render actions which allow you to get growl notifications, send email (with log), send sms and even iPhone push notifications when your renders are done or you have an error” – plus more! The BG Renderer web site includes more details, as well as an extensive set of video tutorials on its features. If you wish you had more hours in the day, check it out. I just bought the Basic version, but I suspect I’m going to regret it, as I’ll no longer have an excuse to take periodic “render breaks” to catch up on things like eating and sleeping…