Downloading Your Rendered Files
When the farm finishes your render, the frames are waiting on a page of their own. This guide follows the whole handover: the moment your project turns Completed, how to read the download page, and how to pull down a single frame, one output folder or the entire render. It also covers the seven day clock that starts as soon as the render ends.
When Your Render Finishes
There is no stream of frames arriving while a render runs, and nothing to babysit. The farm works through your frame range and tells you once, at the end. That single moment is what this section covers, because everything else in the guide follows from it.
The Email That Says It Is Done
As soon as the last frame is finalised, BoltRenders sends a completion email to the address on your account. It names the project that finished and carries two ways forward: a link to your dashboard, and a direct download button that takes you straight to that project's files.
You do not have to wait for it. The dashboard updates on its own, so if the tab is already open you will see the change before the mail arrives.
Completed: The Signal on Your Dashboard
On your dashboard the project entry turns green and its status reads Completed. Two things appear alongside it that were not there before: a countdown telling you how long the files will be kept, and a download control at the right of the row.
Completed is one of thirteen statuses a project moves through. If you want the full sequence, from the first evaluation stage to the terminal states, it is set out in Understanding project statuses on your dashboard.
Opening the Download Page
Three routes lead to the same place. The download control in the project row, the DOWNLOAD FILES button inside the expanded project details, and the button in the completion email all open the download page for that specific project.
The page is tied to one project at a time, so if you have several finished renders you will open it once per project. You need to be signed in to reach it. If your session has expired, sign in and the page will load your files without losing your place.
The Download Page
The download page has no site header and no footer. It is a workspace for one job, and the labelled backlink at the top left is the way back to your dashboard. Four things share the screen: that backlink, the file explorer card holding your output, a help note pinned at the bottom left, and the download manager waiting at the bottom right.
The Backdrop Is Your Own Render
The image filling the right of the page is not decoration and it is not a stock picture. It is a real frame from the project you are looking at, taken from that job's own evaluation preview, so every project's download page looks like the project it belongs to.
When your render uses multilayer output, the page picks the combined pass for the backdrop, because that is the one that looks like the finished image rather than like a data channel.
Browsing Your Rendered Output
The explorer card is two levels deep and no more. The first level is everything your render produced at the top of its output; the second is the inside of a File Output folder. There is no deeper nesting to get lost in.
The Root Level
Folders come first, then frames. A folder tile stands for one File Output node in your compositor, named after the path you gave that node. Every tile after them is one frame of your main render output, in frame order from the first to the last.
Hover a frame and a small download plate appears in its top right corner. That plate is the control, and it carries its own dark ground so it stays readable over a bright frame as well as a dark one.
How the File Names Are Built
Frame numbers are always padded to six digits, so frame 42 is 000042 and the files sort correctly in any file browser and in any image sequence importer. Frames of your main output carry nothing but the number and the extension.
Inside a File Output folder the name also carries the base name you set on the node, and the slot name as well when the node has more than one input. That gives you names in the shape beauty_Combined_000042.exr, which stay unambiguous once several outputs sit in the same folder.
The extension follows the output format the project was rendered with. Most map to what you would expect, and these are the ones that do not:
- JPEG becomes
.jpg, and JPEG 2000 becomes.jp2. - OpenEXR and OpenEXR Multilayer both become
.exr. - Targa and Targa Raw both become
.tga. - TIFF becomes
.tif, Cineon becomes.cinand Iris becomes.rgb.
OpenEXR Frames Show a Mark, Not a Preview
No browser can display an OpenEXR file, so those tiles carry an EXR mark in place of a thumbnail rather than an empty plate. Everything else about the tile works normally: the name is complete and the download plate is there on hover.
If you are weighing OpenEXR against a display format for your own workflow, our article on the format covers what it actually buys you.
Inside a File Output Folder
Open a folder and the top bar changes. The project name is replaced by the folder path, a Back control appears beside it, and the pack button now reads Download Folder and applies to that folder alone.
How that folder structure comes about, and how to name your nodes so it stays easy to read here, is covered in Rendering Blender File Output nodes.
Why Thumbnails Fill In as You Scroll
Each thumbnail is a real preview generated from your rendered frame, and it is fetched only as its tile approaches the viewport. A tile that has not been reached yet shows a moving shimmer, which is a genuine loading state rather than a placeholder graphic.
For the same reason the grid never puts more than five tiles in a row, however wide your monitor is. The number of tiles on screen is the number of preview requests in flight at once, so a wider row would mean a slower first screen on a long sequence, not a faster one.
Downloading Your Files
There are two ways down from this page and they behave differently. A single frame comes to you immediately. Anything larger is packed into a zip archive first, which takes the farm a moment, so those downloads are handed to a manager that keeps track of them for you.
A Single Frame
The download plate on a tile fetches that one file directly. Nothing is packed and nothing is queued, so it is the fastest way to pull one frame out of a long sequence, whether you want to check a detail or you only ever needed that frame.
It works on every tile, including OpenEXR frames and everything inside a File Output folder.
Download All and Download Folder
Download All at the root takes everything the render produced. Download Folder takes one File Output folder. Both do the same thing: they ask the farm to build zip archives of what you selected.
The button reports as it goes. It reads Initializing Packs while the request is being made, then Packing Started once the farm has accepted it, and returns to its normal label a few seconds later. At the same moment the download manager opens by itself at the bottom right, because that is where the archives will appear.
Packing is not instant, and how long it takes depends on how much you asked for. You do not have to sit on the page waiting for the button; the manager tracks the archives from here on.
The Download Manager
Closed, the manager is a round button in the bottom right corner. It carries an accent dot when an archive is ready and you have not taken it yet, so you can leave the panel shut and still know there is something waiting.
Open, it lists every archive for this project and refreshes itself every few seconds. Each row moves through the same three readings.
- Preparing archive means the farm is still zipping. The bar underneath moves, but it is a working indicator rather than a percentage, because packing does not report its progress.
- Ready means the archive exists and its size is shown next to it. The download control is on the right of the row.
- Failed to prepare means the archive could not be built. The row shakes once, stays for a few seconds and clears itself. Ask for it again, and if it fails a second time, contact support with the project name.
A ready archive you have not taken yet wears an accent rim and a small dot. Both disappear the moment you download it, which is how the panel tells the new ones apart from the ones you have already dealt with.
Renders Over 1 GB Arrive in Parts
When the rendered files exceed 1 GB they are split into several archives, and each row then carries a part number in front of its name. A render that packs into three archives gives you rows marked 1/3, 2/3 and 3/3.
Download every part and extract them together. The parts are pieces of one archive, so extracting a single part on its own will not give you a usable set of frames. The help note at the bottom left of the page says the same thing, and it is the only reason that note is there.
Your Files Are Kept for Seven Days
The clock starts when the render finishes, not when you first open the download page. Seven days later the project expires and the files are permanently deleted from the farm. This is the same non persistence that applies to your source project: nothing of yours stays on our systems longer than it has to.
Deletion runs once a day at 01:00 UTC, so the real cut off is the first daily sweep after your seven days are up. That is why the countdown on your dashboard reads in days and hours rather than naming a date. A reminder email goes out before the deadline, but the countdown on the project entry is the number to trust.
Once a project expires its status changes to Expired and there is nothing left to download. Expired files cannot be recovered, so if a deadline is close and you are not sure you have everything, take the full archive now and sort through it later.