I know this is probably too late to help the original author of the question but I have info that may help others who find this. I included the process I went through to discover this in case its helpful to someone.
As far as i know there is not a way to reference an external JSON file in a .mogrt (meaning a file stored on the drive that is continuously updated and changed). I did find however that you can use JSON data and external expression files (.jsx files used to store javascript code snippets to reuse). All you have to do is add the JSON and JSX file as layers to a compisition that is involved in the final MOGRT template. If you only import the data to the project, but do not have it in a composition that is a part of the template then it will be not be added to the template as a "Footage Item" since as far as AE can tell it is an unnecessary item in the AE project.
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I discovered this while creating a somewhat complicated template for my editors. The template itself does a number of things: Changes icons/logo, changes the animation based on which logo is selected, changes three separarate layers of text based a dropdown, changes the color scheme of the background, text, and individual icon/logo elements, as well as giving custom controls to each of these. As i was creating it i kept adding more features to it and realized that if I ever wanted to make a change to a color scheme I would have to update 15 separate expressions. I wanted to find a way to be able to add additional color schemes and only have to type them once which is where my JSON jourmey began.
I created a simple JSON file with two parent objects. The first was all our brand colors referenced by name, which had 4 properties (name, hex, rgb, hsb).
{
"color":{
"strength":{
"name": "strength",
"hex": "243746",
"rgb": [36, 55, 70, 0],
"hsb": [209, 49, 27, 0]
},
...
The second parent object was the color schemes, which were just numbered 1-5. The color schemes themseleves contained key-value pairs for each of the color expression controls (primary, secondary, accent, etc.). The values of these keys were the names of the colors that are in the first category of the JSON doc.
...
},
"colorScheme":{
"1":{
"name": "strength",
"primary": "strength",
"secondary": "empowerment",
"accent": "authenticity",
"iconBG": "balance",
"iconBoundary": "authenticity",
"background": "strength",
"meetingText": "balance",
"speakerText": "authenticity",
"languageText": "balance"
},
"2":{
....
I then wrote the following function to a JSX file:
{
"getColor": function(dropDownMenu, colorSchemeProperty, jsonData){
var selection = jsonData.colorScheme[dropDownMenu][colorSchemeProperty];
return data.color[selection]['hex']
}
I created a variable called 'property' on each layer which was equal to which property of the color scheme object it was to use. I then passed "property" along with the colors scheme dropdown control and the JSON data to this function as an argument in the hexToRGB() built in expression. The function would look at the JSON color scheme object, find the property passed in, and store the name of the color. It then went up to the color section of the JSON data, looked up the color by the name stored in the previous step, and returned its hex value.
var scheme = comp("Regional Graphics Master Layer").layer("###Master").effect("Color Scheme")("Menu");
data = footage("SLM Graphic Data.json").sourceData;
lib = footage("SLM Template Functions.jsx").sourceData;
property = 'iconBoundary';
hexToRgb(lib.getColor(scheme, property, data))
I did a few tests and every was working great so i was able to go from the old code of if-else hell (30ish lines of expression code per layer, for 15-20 layers), and only use 6 lines of code for each layer. I bundled the template and sent it off. Then i tried it in premier the next day on one of the editors machines and... nothing. WTF. so i then spent 4 hours trying to figure out how to make it work in all sorts of hacky ways with very limited success. Adding the json as a layer and refencing it would only allow me to access the top layer but couldnt drill down using dot notation or names. If i was to go that route i would have to use position arrays and my brain was already mush. I then realized I might be working too hard and may have just wasted several hours of my life trying accomplish something super simple.
I then copied my old mogrt that wasnt working and broke into it. (If you dont know how to access the AE project stored in a template its super easy. Just change the name of the file from "something.mogrt" to "something.zip" and unzip the resulting file. Open the file and then change the "project.aegraphic" to "project.zip" and unzip again and you will then have the AE file.) When i opened the AE file there were no JSON or JSX files in the project so i added them to the master comp in the original AE project and exported that template and did the whole process again. Lo and behold, I know had my JSON data, JSX library and all the features I built were now working.
Hope this helps someone at sometime, somewhere.
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