@R1ot

Working with the Essential Graphics panel and Templater can be a bit daunting at first, as it’s a very unique workflow. Let me see if I can describe how we might set up a project in the way you described, and hopefully, that will be enough to get things moving in the right direction.

For this example, I’m going to refer to our main AE comp as “Main Project”. The first thing we’ll want to do is locate the properties we want to adjust and drag them into the Essential Graphics Panel. For this example, let’s say we have an image layer named “picture”. We’ll want to open the Transform section of the properties and drag the “Scale” and “Position” properties into the EGP.

Once we’ve got those properties in our EGP window, we’ll want to rename them to something that’s easy to reference in our Google Sheet. For now, let’s rename “Image Scale” to just “scale” and “Image Position” to “position”.

From there, let’s create a new comp in AE and edit it so that the name is surrounded with double curly braces, like {{Comp1}}. The double curly braces will instruct Templater that this will be the default comp to process when it comes time to export. After that, we’ll want to drag our “Main Project” comp into the {{Comp1}} comp and rename it. For this example, I’m going to rename this comp to “assembly” (with no quotes).

After that, we’ll want to drag the Templater Settings Effect onto our “assembly” comp so that Templater knows which EGP settings to adjust. We can verify that everything is set up correctly by opening the “assembly” comp and confirming that we have both the Templater Settings Effect and an Essential Properties section that contains our scale and position values.

Now, we’ll want to head over to our Google Sheet to add the columns to control the data. The names should be formatted like this: layername@[property name]. So, for this example, we’ll want to add a column for our scale property: assembly@[scale], and one for our position property: assembly@[position].

Once that’s done, we’ll need to populate those columns with values. However, if we take a look at the scale and position values in our project, we’ll see that they both contain two values, separated by a comma. That means that the value for those properties is an array, and that will need to be reflected in our data source. So, for example, in our assembly@[position] column, we’ll need to add something like this: [100,100]. That should instruct Templater to set the value for the position EGP property to 100,100. This is a bit counterintuitive when it comes to the scale property, but since AE adjusts the horizontal and vertical scale with two different, matching values, we’ll still need an array for that property as well.

Finally, we should be able to preview the {{Comp1}} project and see the results reflected in the Essential Properties values. As a quick side note, this won’t affect the linked properties in the “Main Project” comp, only in the “assembly” precomp in {{Comp1}}.

Hopefully, that all makes sense, but if you have any questions, you can let us know here or get in touch with us directly at support@dataclay.com.

Happy Rendering!

@megan

Thanks for getting in touch with us. We recently identified a bug in Templater 3.7.1 that is almost certainly the cause of this error message.

To fix it, we’ll want to open the Templater Preferences, then click “Advanced” and uncheck “Layout engine” and “Time Sculpting”. Next, click on the “Bot” tab in Templater’s Preferences and ensure the “Prevent event script execution on Preview” is enabled. Once that’s done, we’ll want to see if the error persists. If it goes away, we should be able to reenable the “Layout engine” and “Time Sculpting” options.

If we continue to see the issue after performing these steps, we’ll probably want to continue this conversation through our support channels, as we’ll likely need to get some log files from the system that might contain information that wouldn’t be appropriate to post publicly. If we end up going that route, you can email us at support@dataclay.com or post a new helpdesk ticket right here.

Thanks,

Jeff

Hi @Jeff,

Thanks for the super speedy response!

So I tried the expressions in that other link about highlighting text but it didn’t quite work (it was returning Error:“Can’t turn result into numeric value”).

But it’s ok as it led me to an alternative but still perfectly effective solution!

For more context:

We have 13 different risk warnings (set as collumns) for each row of data (e.g. Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc)

The way I have set this up is so that I simply change the name of the Risk Warning pre-composition in After Effects from one license to the next (i.e. changing the data collected from one collumn to another in the Google Sheet) which then updates to the correct pre-composition with the correct text (also linked to the spreadsheet.)

Each Risk Warning pre-composition now has a text animator with the stroke added individually which was a simply copy/paste job really.

Here’s some visuals to help bring my terrible explanation to life:

Screenshot 2024-09-06 at 13.12.29.png
Each risk warning is in its own collumn (depending on the request from the marketing team for a particular risk warning we can generate the appropriate text directly in the project file and render a batch of assets for them)

Screenshot 2024-09-06 at 13.12.54.png
This pre-composition links to the corresponding collumn in the Google Sheet and changes the Pre-comp based on the collumn we want to use

Screenshot 2024-09-06 at 13.13.13.png
Each Pre-comp is set with an animator to create the stroke giving it that ‘bold’ effect (not linked to the spreadsheet as the stroke will not change - only the text within the Google Sheet will change once per quarter (and even then it’s just 2 numbers which won’t affect which words are ‘bold’ and which are not)

Thanks for your help!

Jake

In my case the issue was caused by keyframes on the Source Text of a text layer. Removing the keyframes resolved the issue. Thanks to the support team!

@Jeff @Jon , Good afternoon, could you tell me a prediction of normalization? I ask this because it is impacting a lot on our workflow. I need to decide whether to redo some internal processes.

@dwalters

The most common cause for the error shown in the screenshot is, more often than not, attempting to authenticate using an older version of Templater. Google made a change to the authentication method that their API uses to grant apps access to Google Sheets last year. Due to this change, previous versions of Templater will no longer be able to sign in to Google Sheets.

The first thing I’d try is updating to the latest version of Templater. You can download the installer for Templater Standard (for AE 2022 and above) from this link:

https://assets.dataclay.com/Templater3.zip

and Templater Legacy (For AE 2021 and below) here:

https://assets.dataclay.com/Templater3-Legacy.zip

Hopefully, that’s all we should need to get things up and running, but if you run into further issues, just let us know, and we’ll see where we need to go from there.

Thanks!

@rkvalvaa

Thanks for the update; that’s quite odd. It’s possible that this might be caused by After Effects holding on to some of the legacy preferences from the previous installation of Templater. Could you try clearing the After Effects preferences using the method outlined on this page and see if that makes any difference in what you’re seeing?

Another thing you might try would be to create a new project and see if the issue is limited to previously created After Effects files. We’ve seen some problems in the past with project files storing information from previous versions of Templater/After Effects which might account for what you’re seeing here.

Thanks!

@jeff THank you so much - I took the open/closed quotations route and it works fine. Appreciate it!

-Joe

@jcreifenberg

You can absolutely use Templater to change a layer’s font! It’s a bit tricky, but it basically involves using Templater to bring in data that is referenced by an After Effects Expression. There are a few limitations, but let me see if I can explain the basics.

So, for this scenario, we’ll have two layers, “text” and “font”. “Text” will be the layer whose font we want to change “font” will be a text layer populated with whatever font we wish to apply. Once both layers are bringing in data correctly, we’ll want to add an Expression to the Source Text property of the “text” layer. Alt or Option-click on “Source Text” and add this expression:

text.sourceText.style.setFont(thisComp.layer("font").text.sourceText);

This expression will take whatever is in the “font” layer and apply it to the font property of the “text” layer. So if the “font” layer contained “Arial-BoldMT” (with no quotes), that should change the “text” layer to the font Arial Bold.

There are a few limitations to this method of font changing. First, you’ll need to make sure you’re referencing the exact font name, or else AE won’t be able to read the data from the “font” layer. There are a few different ways to get this information, but one easy way is to hit the white and grey “play” button in the Expressions section, choose Text>Font, and then choose the appropriate font/style.

Another limitation to this method is that you’re constricted to the font styles that After Effects supports. I did some digging, and it doesn’t appear that AE has strikethrough support in their font engine. If you can find a strikethrough-based font, that should work, but AE doesn’t seem to support that particular style right now.

Finally, you might take a look at this entry on Adobe’s website for more information about using Expressions to control Text Properties. There are some other options explored on this page, like Faux Bold or Faux Italics, that might be useful to your project. Many of these options can be controlled using the same Expression logic described above.

Hopefully, that’s enough to get you started, but if you have any questions, please feel free to let us know.

Thanks!

@jeff That is fantastic. I will test this out today.

@UncleMonty

That’s quite odd. The OS of the machine running Templater typically shouldn’t make a difference when it comes to getting data from a Google Sheet. Can you give us some more information on the errors that you’re seeing?

If you’d like, you can also email our support channel at support@dataclay.com. Let us know what you can, and we’ll take it from there.

Thanks!

@jeff Yes! This is it! Thanks, everyone.

@RobAranter Do you have any special characters in the title of your Google Sheet?

It could also be something to do with your Google Account, or with the authorization that Templater had previously retrieved. Can you try signing back into the problematic account in the Google Sheets Setup?

@Neil-González Have you added those to the process exceptions list? Is there a separate file blocking area that you can add them to a permanent whitelist? I’m not directly familiar with Trend Micro’s interface.

Hello,

Templater Bot cannot watch multiple sheets simultaneously or switch between sheets once loaded. When you load the sheet data into Templater you’ll pick a worksheet from your data source. The only way to switch that is going to be to reload Templater and choose a different sheet.

When it comes to the sort of flexibility you’re describing, you may consider working with a JSON data source instead of a Google Sheet. A JSON file, hosted either locally or remotely, has a great deal of flexibility when it comes to the data in each entry and may work better than a single large spreadsheet. You can check out more information about using a JSON file as a data source here.

If there’s anything else we can help you with, please just let us know.

Thanks,

Jeff

@vjn86 (and for anyone else reading this later)

Yes, you can do this, but you will need to use expressions to accomplish it. You can set numerical values in your data, then map that data to a dynamic text layer in your project. Then, you can use a parseInt() expression to parse the value of the sourceText of the layer into a number that can be used in any numerical value such as position, scale, rotation, etc. See referencing dynamic text layers section.

@dwalters There are videos demonstrating setting a target as well as switching between project files. For data in expressions, see the link in my previous post under the section “referencing dynamic text layers.”