Free eBook on Making MOGRTs
I wrote an eBook about making MOGRTs (Motion Graphics templates) in After Effects, for Premiere Pro, and Adobe has made it available for free on their website. The book covers every aspect of the process, and has a lot of examples and tips on MOGRT design. It’s also a great intro to writing Expressions in After Effects.
The book has hundreds of little code snippets that you can copy from the PDF and paste directly into After Effects. This makes it a treasure trove of expressions.
Download the eBook here: https://adobe.ly/makemogrts
Making MOGRTs: Creating Motion Graphics templates in Adobe After Effects. By Jarle Leirpoll.
Below are some bespoke MOGRTs that Jarle has made for his (mostly Norwegian) customers. This should give you an idea of what can be done with MOGRTs.
For best quality, click the YouTube logo to go to YouTube.
Read more about the book on Adobe’s blog.
Sample pages
Error catching and custom error messages
Proper rounding of numbers
Finding the edges of text and shapes
Data-driven MOGRTs
Contents
2 Contents
4 What is a Motion Graphics template?
5 Why use After Effects to create MOGRTs
5 The Adobe MOGRT ecosystem
6 MOGRT limitations
6 Special cases where After Effects needs to be installed
8 A brief history of MOGRTs
10 The Essential Graphics Panel
10 Let’s create a simple MOGRT
12 Share the MOGRT
14 Using the MOGRT in Premiere Pro
16 MOGRT settings in Effect Controls panel
17 Sort by Recent or by Title
17 Add more folder paths
18 List view in Essential Graphics Panel
19 Different ways to add properties to the Essential Graphics panel
19 Create a keyboard shortcut for Add Property to Essential Graphics
20 Supported types of property controls
22 Add groups and comments in the Essential Graphics panel
24 Using expressions to make user-friendly MOGRTs
24 What can expressions do?
24 Some features in After Effects that use expressions
26 How to add an expression to a property
26 Enable or disable all expressions on selected layers
27 Let After Effects write the code for you
29 Copy and paste expressions from documents and websites
32 Expression language fundamentals
32 Case sensitivity
32 Expressions ignore spaces and line breaks
32 Add comments to your code
33 Use existing values as a starting point for expressions
34 Punctuation in expressions
34 What’s a variable?
35 What’s an array?
36 What’s a function?
36 Useful keyboard shortcuts for expressions
37 Be careful when using expressions with Master Properties
38 Expression Controls—your best friends
39 The Slider Control
41 Combine Separate Dimensions and Slider Controls
41 Color Control
44 Checkbox Control
45 Use a Controls layer
46 Most useful expressions for MOGRT design
46 The linear and ease expressions
49 if/else expressions
53 sourceRectAtTime
57 Use toComp to fix parenting problems
58 Saving your expressions for easy access
59 Bounce & Overshoot and Inertial Bounce
59 Custom ease expressions
60 parseFloat
61 Rounding numbers
62 Split
65 Change the timing of keyframes with expressions
66 Expression error banner
67 Making MOGRTs user-friendly
67 Decide if it’s okay if After Effects must be installed
69 Use fonts that are available to all Adobe Creative Cloud users
69 Use sliders and rounding to give the user some options
70 Control several properties with one slider or checkbox
70 Give the user a Duration slider in earlier versions
70 Allow for multiple lines of text
72 Allow for different text designs
76 Nick Howell’s timing guide preview
77 Responsive Design — Time
79 Why still use a duration slider?
79 Foolproofing the MOGRT
82 Data-driven MOGRTs
86 Using the data-driven MOGRT in Premiere Pro
88 MOGRT design tips
88 Use Adobe Color
89 The Adobe Capture app
90 Use Collapse Transformations
90 Make the MOGRT resolution independent
91 Center anchor point in new shape layers
91 Place anchor points where you need them
92 Use one custom animation in many layers
93 Get a visual representation of the animation
94 Reuse code with index
95 Use Master Properties
98 Use standard procedures, work faster
98 Add audio to your MOGRTs
100 Making MOGRTs for your customers and colleagues
100 Their design manual is the bible
101 Choice of approved fonts
101 Make MOGRTs with built-in safety nets
101 Beware of openers
102 Get access to their library
103 Optimizing MOGRT performance
103 Keep the layer count down
106 Reduce the render time with pre-renders
107 Exporting and distributing MOGRTs
107 Use nesting to avoid problems when you export MOGRTs
107 Use nesting to fix problems with unrelated properties
108 Universalizing the MOGRT
109 Exporting MOGRTs for use on your own system
109 Sending MOGRT files to customers and colleagues
110 Selling MOGRTs
111 Making changes in existing MOGRTs
112 What happens when you install a MOGRT?
116 Replace the MOGRT with a new version
117 How to solve font syncing issues
117 That’s it!
118 Appendix: Online Resources for MOGRT creators
118 Tutorials on Essential Graphics panel
118 Tutorials on expressions
118 After Effects Expressions forums
119 JavaScript resources
119 Useful scripts and extensions for MOGRT creators
121 About the author
121 Thanks
122 Want to sell your MOGRTs?
122 Become a contributor to Adobe Stock.
is good
Thank you very much for the book. I am going to take a look right now.
Hi Jarle. Super helpful resource. Thanks
You did not, you crazy fool! This is amazing. Thank you for sharing this knowledge!