Toolkit Features

Toolkit

Please familiarize yourself with the following features to get the most out of this toolkit:

Essential Graphics & Essential Properties 

In Use: All Elements

Each asset has been set up to work for an average workflow that may be creating multiple ratios of the same video at the same time. If it is likely for there to be multiple instances of an asset on the same timeline then by default they do not share global properties and should be updated through Essential Properties. Where as assets that appear only once on a timeline but most likely across multiple ratios, do share global properties and can be controlled by the Essential GFX panel. This default can be easily overridden by deselecting the “push/pull” icons in Essential Properties, which will push/pull settings to/from global properties, (Note: “Push to” will update every instance of this asset): 

Protected Regions

In Use: Bugs & Text Cards

Protected Regions preserves a section of animation (e.g., animation in/out) and allows you to easily extend the duration of a precomposed element to fit your composition without affecting these sections. The protected regions appear with a blue underline on the timeline.

Media Replacement

In-Use: Bug and Title Treatment

As a new feature, Media Replacement within Essential Graphics is currently restrictive to work with so we have opted to use pre-compositions to update and replace images/footage and title treatments. The only element we have built it into (along with a pre-composition alternative) is the Bug and Title Treatment and we only recommend using it in the case of a multi-show promo when you need to cut between several title treatments.

To do this you will want to create multiple instances of the Bug and Title Treatment pre-composition on your timeline and use Essential Properties to replace the title treatment by double clicking on the small image in the drop-down menu.

GPU Acceleration

The Toolkit requires GPU Acceleration to be enabled:

Select File > Project Settings, click the Video Rendering and Effects tab, and set the Use option to Mercury GPU Acceleration

16 Bit Color Space

GPU Acceleration requires a color depth is set to 16 bits per channel.

Known After Effects Bugs/Issues

The current 2020/21/22 After Effects releases have several known bugs to watch out for:

Cutting Layers with Protected Regions: Only effecting the 2022 release, pre-compositions that has Protected Regions, extended in duration and then cut, wont slice correctly. This can be overcome by precomposing the layer a second time along with any other (e.g., null) layer.

Unaligned Graphic Elements: Mainly effecting the Bug and Title Treatment, if the original line or title treatment become noticeably unaligned, simply toggle/update any setting within Essential Graphics or Essential Properties and it will correct itself.

Mogerts – Coming Soon

Motion Graphics template (MOGRTs) support for those working in a Premiere workflow is coming soon.

Avid Title Card Project – Coming Soon

A stand-alone Image/Footage and Title Treatment Title Card project for those working in an Avid workflow is coming soon.

Templates

Artboard

The Paid Social and Digital static templates feature all global specs on one artboard. When starting a new project we recommend deleting any media placements/specs not required for your brief.

Unlinked smart objects can all be relinked by right-clicking any layer and selecting “Update All Modified Content”.

Shared Assets

All specs within the Paid Social and Digital artboard share common assets (including image bases and title treatments), which makes updating them quick and easy. It is important to relink all assets after downloading.

Generate

To automatically generate the image assets, follow these steps: 

1. Select Preferences > Plugins > Enable Generator
2. Select File > Generate > Image Assets
3. In the Finder, select all files > Rename > Select Add Text > Insert Project Name > Select Before Name.