Skip to main content
B
bldg13
Participant
April 22, 2021
Question

Can you use Essential Graphics (mogrt files) in After Effects?

  • April 22, 2021
  • 1 reply
  • 218 views

I could be missing something really basic here, but I don't really understand the value of Essential graphics outside of creating a market to share/sell templates. A market like that is great and useful but it wasn't all I expected.

(I posted this in here in Adobe's User Voice but really should have posted here first to see if I'm just missing something)

 

For context, I spend most of my time in UX design tools like Figma and Sketch. A powerful feature in these tools are Components (in Figma) and Symbols (in Sketch). They allow you to create reusable components that can be used throughout your file (called instances). These instances usually have a fair amount of customizing that you can apply to them. Also, when you adopt this component-based workflow, you have a single source of truth that you can go back and make any necessary modifications. These modifications happen in realtime. If you change the color of something, you see it happen in all of your instances right away. This allows for fast exploration, iteration and design-decision making. This is further enhanced if you nest components inside of other components.

 

So, when I first learned about Essential Graphics in Adobe's video apps, I assumed that it would be similar components/symbols in Figma, Sketch and other similar design tools—heck, even Illustrator has symbols pretty similar to this.

 

When you create an Essential Graphic (mogrt file, I guess?) you sort of get this functionality inside of Premiere—you create a template, then you bring it in to Premier and you can modify attributes and reuse it over and over. That's great. However, unless I'm doing something wrong, it doesn't seem like you can really use these Essential Graphics inside of After Effects! That seems like a big miss to me. When I create animated slide decks and video presentations in After Effects, there are tons of duplicated animations. Being able to create and reuse animations (components) like this would be super helpful. Make it once, duplicate it multiple times throughout your video. Now if you want to go back and tweak the timing of your animation, you should be able to just go back to the original, make your adjustments and bam—they are all updated! But I can't see any way of really using these inside After Effects, let alone quickly and easily updating them.

 

So what am I missing?

This topic has been closed for replies.

1 reply

R
Community Expert
Rick GerardCommunity Expert
Community Expert
April 22, 2021

You can open a MOGRT, but you cannot use it in the same way you use it in Premiere Pro. 

If you intelligently create templates that have a bunch of nested compositions the whole thing is a lot easier to control in the essential graphics workspace. You can put all of the controls in the essential graphics panel and do all of your editing right there. I find it incredibly useful for templates, especially motion graphics templates.

B
bldg13Author
Participant
April 23, 2021

Thanks for your reponse. I'll have to play around with nested comps inside essential graphics and see what all that opens up. I'm curious what your process is for when you need to make updates in an essential graphics template and get those updates over to your premier project. Those updates don't seem to be automatic—rather, in Premiere, you have to drag that new or updated template back on to the timeline (holding alt/option to replace). The overrides seem to stay, but you need to make sure you don't miss any of the old templates.

I think I get it—and I don't mean to undersell the value of what is currently available through essential graphics. I just feel like Adobe is missing a couple of key parts that could make these so much better. I'd love to see these templates dynamically linked back to a source more like components in Figma. See a really simple example here: https://vimeo.com/540615031

 

 

Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement
Using the community Terms of use Privacy Cookie preferences Do not sell or share my personal information ad choicesAdChoices