Customising Apple Motion Templates
Jerry Leer from the Apple Motion Template website MotionTemplate gives DigMo! readers an exclusive and easy to follow guide to customising templates in Apple Motion. This easy to follow tutorial will introduce the basis of the templates window, project pane, dropzones and editing text in Apple Motion and is a great start to new users of this motion graphics application.
Why start with a template?
There are a couple of reasons why it is easiest to start with a template, 1 it saves a lot of time, 2 if you don’t know how to create the motion graphics but can edit them you will get the job done and learn in the process how all the elements came together.
I am a big believer in templates but only if they are completely editable, if they contain graphics or movies that are the whole look and feel of the template with only a few editable elements on top then once you have used that template it would be hard to use it again.
I also like to save my work as much as is possible as templates so I can reuse it at a later date, for example if you use a piece of text that tracks and scales towards you with a blur and fade in and out why not create it and save it for later use. Very soon you will build up a catalog of your own templates that will save you time and expense doing the same thing over and over again.
Something to keep in mind is saving the individual parts of a composition for later use is going to be more usable that the whole project saved as a template. Opening a template is as simple as going to the file menu and selecting ‘open template’, or CMD shift O, I did say that it was simple.
Throughout the tutorial click on the images for a full screen view. You can move between screenshots using the full screen mode by clicking on the image.
This is the templates widow and you can see the template themes on the left with the templates available in the middle, these are all the default templates that ship with Apple Motion.
If you have saved any templates yourself or installed any 3rd party templates then these will be available in this window as well.
I have selected the theme ‘mt free templates’ from the left window which is a free 3rd party template from Motion Template.
After selecting the theme, click on a template in the middle window to see a preview in the right window and under the preview, information about that template. Our template is informing us that it is 720 X 576 25fps and 750 frames in length, so it is 10 seconds long,
You can reduce the available templates by selecting a format at the top,
it is set to ‘all’, changing it to PAL will show only the PAL templates. The theme ‘mt free templates’ only contains PAL templates so the window still shows the same templates. Click on ‘open template’ to, I guess you know what I am going to say, open the template.
Once the template opens the 1st thing to do is drag the playhead along or hit the space bar to play the template, you get a much better idea of what is going on in the template in the large canvas.
The easiest way to view all the parts that make up the template is to open the project pane, which is this button top right of the interface, F5 is the shortcut for this window.
These are all the parts that make up this template and the best way to work out what is what on screen is to turn the ticks on and off in the ‘on’ column in the project pane.
Remember that if that group is not visible until a later time then turning the layer on and off will have no effect, I usually move the playhead into the middle of the timeline when more of the parts are on screen.
If the tick is on and still grayed out in the project pane then they are not under the playhead which means that are not visible.
I always try to teach that is is more efficient to name elements as you go along than to try and do it all at the end or even worse not to bother, that makes finding the right parts to edit easier.
In this template we have a camera, a group containing the ‘www.motiontemplate.co.uk’ text, a group with 3 text layers and a group with 3 groups that contain a dropzone and a cloned layer in each.
Replacing one of the dropzones is as easy as drag and drop but 1st you need to get to the file browser. CMD1 or clicking on the file browser allows you to select media to import into your project.
I have selected ‘car clip1′ and dragged it on the canvas, hovering above ‘replace me1′ which is a dropzone, you can tell it has selected the dropzone for replacing because of the Yellow outline.
Alternately you can drag the movie from the file browser to the project pane and when the curve arrow appears it has selected the object to replace.
This is after dropping 3 movies on to the dropzones, the dropzones have changed and so have the reflections underneath.
A cloned layer is a layer that has a source that is another object, in our case the source is the dropzone, so changing the dropzone changes the clone. Changing the text is as simple as double clicking it in the canvas and typing, be sure to click the text and not the space in-between the letters or you will select the object behind the text.
Alternately if you find it difficult to select the text in the canvas you can select it in the project pane, hit F4 then click on the format tab and change the text at the bottom in the text box.
When you have made all your changes save the project, you have been saving as you went along haven’t you?
After saving it would be great if this new template was available in Motion and Final Cut Pro via the templates window, so we will save this as a new template.
Go to menu file ’save as template’ to open the save template dialog box.
Give your template a name I have ‘my new template 1′
Select a theme from the theme pop up or create your own, we have clicked on new theme and named it ‘ the best templates’.
Before hitting the save button, if the template is another format like NTSC or HD then you can set it here under format and that will aid in restricting the available templates in the open template window., click save.
Opening the template is the same as opening it in the 1st place except the theme will be different, go to the file menu and selecting ‘open template’ Selecting ‘the best templates’ theme and ‘my new template 1′ will open our recently saved template.
About Jerry Leer
Jerry Leer has been using Apple Motion since its 1st release and runs www.motiontemplate.co.uk a website dedicated to Apple Motion templates and resources.
Jerry is an Apple certified trainer and Adobe certified expert with over 15 years experience in post production and training.
He is currently presenting on Propeller TV (Sky 195) and is head of training for video and motion graphics for Corps Business, a leading training company.
Talentedpixie a training company producing dvd and screen based training use Jerry Leer for Apple Final Cut Pro, Motion and Adobe After Effects delivery. ’If you would like to have a chat with Jerry Leer, he will be presenting the ViZFx & Editing Seminars at broadcastvideoexpo Earls Court 2, London on the 17th to 19th February http://www.broadcastvideoexpo.co.uk ’
This is great, very useful. I have used the stock templates in a few projects but have not had the courage to experiment. I will work through this tutorial as a guide.