The Bot for Templater
The Templater Bot edition ships with a feature that makes Templater behave like a robot operating After Effects for you. This feature, called The Bot, works as a background process watching for incoming data and rendering video. Once your AE project is rigged for use with Templater, you can use The Bot to customize and render it without operating the After Effects user interface. Rendering happens automatically as new data is submitted to a data source. Developers can create front end applications, such as web or mobile apps, that feed data into Templater's data source, offering a collaborative, custom video content creation solution.
Frequently Asked Questions about The Bot
What data source types work with The Bot?
With the release of Templater 3.0, The Bot supports Dataclay QUE, Google Sheets, URL feeds, and local JSON and TSV files as data sources.
WARNING When using a URL feed, The Bot cannot update the value of the "render-status" key because the data source is specific to the user's system. Therefore, users should register custom scripts to update "render-status" values at appropriate events to avoid re-rendering "ready" data. As of version 2.1.10, the After Job, After Batch, and On Bot Disable events are broadcast.
How often does The Bot check for new data?
For Google Sheets, The Bot reads at regular intervals that can be no shorter than 0.3 minutes, or about 18 seconds. Templater uses the Google Sheets API to read and write data to your spreadsheets stored in your Google Drive and must regard API rate limitations. For URL Feeds, The Bot reads at regular intervals that can be no shorter than 0.2 minutes, or about 12 seconds.
Can I have more than one Bot reading data from the same spreadsheet?
Yes, absolutely! You can have multiple machines reading new data from your spreadsheet for heavy versioning loads. The machines can also be in separate geographical locations because your Google Sheets document is saved securely in the cloud.
How does The Bot work with Templater Rig?
You can use Templater Rig to prepare an AE project for processing by The Bot. In a studio setting, you may have multiple Templater Rig users preparing AE projects that are eventually processed by The Bot.
Does The Bot have a command line interface?
Yes, The Bot provides a command line interface to control Templater as it interfaces with After Effects. Dataclay provides open-source tools to help you get started with the CLI.
