Preview Modes

You can preview what Templater’s layout engine will do to your dynamic layers by using the Preview feature. After mapping data to your composition layers and configuring their layout rules, you can either preview a new version of your composition one at a time or have Templater cycle through multiple versions of the composition automatically.

TIP While rigging your After Effects project to work with Templater, you may want to preview how it adjusts dynamic layers even when data has yet to be mapped to them. Use current state preview mode to see how Templater handles layout using the currently displayed data in your layers.

Manual Mode

With a manual preview, Templater retrieves data from your data source and updates all dynamic layers with that data. You can specify which data Templater should use each time you click Preview. For example, if you wanted to quickly see what a series of words looked like for a particular text layer, use the next row preview mode. Then, each time you press Preview, you will see your dynamic layers update with data from consecutive rows in your spreadsheet. You can also force Templater to pull row data from a range’s start row, end row, or from a row in between.

NOTE  Templater re-reads your data source each time you preview and does not make use of caching. If you want to quickly iterate through a series of previews, use the Cycle Previews button.

Cycle Mode

In cycle mode, Templater retrieves a range of data and cycles through each preview automatically, displaying layers with updated data and layout. While cycling through previews automatically, you are able to change the method that Templater selects data from the range using the Preview uses dropdown menu.

NOTE  Templater reads the data source only one time before it begins cycling previews. Changed or newly added data will not show up in a preview while Templater is in cycle preview mode.