Apple Motion Templates
Apple Motion templates are templates that can be used on both Apple Motion and Final Cut Pro. According to Motion Wiki, there are two kinds of templates in Motion, composition templates and Final Cut Pro templates.
The difference between the two templates is the way they are published. To give you an example see the screenshots below:
Final Cut Pro templates are divided into different categories, such as Titles, Generators, Effects & Transitions. On the other hand, Apple Motion Composition templates will only show the published parameters (if provided) and the layers within the composition.
I’m using a file name Rounded Corner Lower Third from Motion Master Templates and this is the overview of the template once opened in Apple Motion.
On the left side we have the Inspector Tab, the list of layers in the layers panel, the composition viewport and lastly the template timeline. Let’s focus our attention in the Inspector Tab and look at the published parameters. The published parameters are the settings that you can edit and change in Final Cut Pro but also in Apple Motion as well.
These three checkboxes are called Rigs. Rigging lets you map one or more parameters at preset values to a single control. For example, you can rig a single slider to change the size, color, and tracking of a text object to a specific range of preset values. Or you can rig a single checkbox to activate shadows and reflections for all objects in a project.
To know more details about Rigging, you can check the Apple Motion Wiki
The next part we will look at the template is the Drop Zones. Some templates might contain multiple drop zones. It may also be located in different sections within the published parameters area. The drop zone is also visible in the workspace area.
This part controls the color, roundness and width of the lower third.
After looking at the published parameters, let’s have a look at the layers list of the template. As you can see there are two layers panel in Motion, one is the main layers tab and the other is in the timeline panel. In the main layers tab, you will notice that the layers are grouped into different sections. Unlike a precomp in After Effects, Apple Motion uses a group to combine layers.
Some templates are organized into different scenes, if it is a slideshow or an opener type of template.
Lastly, we have the timeline panel. On this panel,there are red dots and some green markers. The red dots represent the keyframe locations on this template. The green markers are the Build In/Build Out, which indicates the intro and outro section of the template. To know more about the different template markers in Apple Motion, click this link.
That’s it for today. I hope you can now navigate your way when using or editing a Motion template you download online. Some templates might look easy at its preview, but once you open the template, you will be surprised at how many layers and links are involved. Another thing to mention is that, other templates that you download online cannot open in Motion. it is copyright protected by the author.