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description: "After Effects Motion Graphics Templates (Mogrts) — Level 2 built titles directly in Premiere's Essential Graphics panel. This module covers the more…"---

06 · After Effects Motion Graphics Templates (Mogrts)

Level 2 built titles directly in Premiere's Essential Graphics panel. This module covers the more powerful direction: building a title/graphic in After Effects with exposed, editable controls, then exporting it as a Motion Graphics Template (.mogrt) that a Premiere editor (with no AE experience or even without After Effects installed) can drop in and customize safely.

1. Building a template-ready composition in AE

  1. Build the animated element normally (text, shapes, keyframed motion, per Level 3), but plan which properties an editor should be able to change later — typically headline text, a color or two, and maybe a duration/timing control — versus everything else, which should stay locked.
  2. Open Window > Essential Graphics, choose the composition from its dropdown at the top, and it lists every layer in that comp on the left.
  3. Select a layer (or a specific property on it, twirled open in the Timeline) and click Add Property in the Essential Graphics panel (or drag the property directly into the panel) to expose it as an editable control.

2. Choosing and organizing exposed controls

  1. Exposed properties appear in the Essential Graphics panel's controls list with editable UI matching their type: a text field for a text layer's Source Text, a color swatch for a Fill Color, a slider for a numeric value, a checkbox for a boolean.
  2. Rename each exposed control (double-click its label in the panel) to something clear for whoever uses the template later — Headline rather than Text Layer 3, Accent Color rather than Fill Color.
  3. Reorder controls by dragging them in the panel's list — put the most commonly changed items (usually headline text) at the top.
  4. Group related controls together with Add Comment entries (panel menu) as simple section labels if the template has many controls, e.g. separating "Text" controls from "Color" controls visually.

3. Exporting as a .mogrt

  1. With the composition and its exposed controls set, click Export Motion Graphics Template... at the bottom of the Essential Graphics panel.
  2. Choose a destination: Local Templates Folder (appears immediately in Premiere's own Essential Graphics browser on the same machine) or a specific file location/Creative Cloud Library (for sharing with a team, tying back into Module 4).
  3. If the composition uses fonts, choose whether to package the fonts with the template (recommended for fonts that might not be installed on the editor's machine) — note that some licensed fonts restrict this, so check font licensing before bundling.

4. Using a .mogrt in Premiere

  1. In Premiere, Window > Essential Graphics > Browse tab lists available templates (Local Templates Folder, Creative Cloud Libraries, and any linked online source); drag one directly onto the timeline like any clip.
  2. Select the placed template on the timeline, switch to the Edit tab in Essential Graphics, and every control exposed back in AE (Module 2's list) appears here — headline text, colors, sliders — editable without ever opening After Effects.
  3. Master Properties: if the same .mogrt is placed multiple times with different local edits, Premiere still allows per-instance overrides — each placed instance keeps its own values independently unless deliberately reset to the template's master.

5. Updating a template after it's already used

  1. If the source AE project (with the same Essential Graphics setup) is edited and re-exported as a .mogrt with the same name/replacing the same file, existing Premiere projects using it can pick up the update via right-click the placed template > Update Motion Graphics Template... if prompted, or by re-browsing and re-placing it.
  2. For an actively-used shared template (via a Team Library, Module 4), this means a designer can fix or refine a title system mid-project and push the update to every editor using it, similar in spirit to Dynamic Link but packaged as a portable, no-AE-required file rather than a live link.

Worked example: a reusable lower-third template

  1. In After Effects, build a lower-third: a background bar, a name text layer, and a title/role text layer, animated with an eased slide-in and fade (Level 3 techniques).
  2. In Essential Graphics, expose the name text (Name), the role text (Role), and the bar's fill color (Accent Color) as controls; leave the animation timing itself locked (not exposed) so editors can't accidentally break the timing.
  3. Export as a .mogrt to the Team Library from Module 4, so every editor on the project can drop it into their own Premiere sequence and fill in different names/roles while the animation and brand color system stay consistent.
  4. In Premiere, place it three times for three different interview subjects, editing each instance's Name/Role/Accent Color independently via Master Properties overrides.

Cheat sheet — Motion Graphics Templates

Task Where
Open Essential Graphics (AE) Window > Essential Graphics
Expose a property as an editable control Select property, Add Property (or drag into panel)
Rename an exposed control Double-click its label
Export as .mogrt Export Motion Graphics Template... button
Browse/place a template (Premiere) Window > Essential Graphics > Browse tab
Edit a placed template's controls Essential Graphics > Edit tab
Per-instance overrides on repeated placements Master Properties

How It Actually Works

  • Exposing a property in Essential Graphics doesn't create new functionality — it publishes a pointer to an existing property in the AE object model, whitelisting it into the template's public control surface, exactly as described in Level 2's Premiere-native Essential Graphics module. Add Property records "this control maps to this specific layer's specific property"; every other property on that layer (its position keyframes, its parenting, any unexposed effect) remains part of the composition's internal structure but has no entry in that mapping, and is therefore invisible and unreachable from Premiere's Edit tab — this is the actual mechanism, not a UI convenience, behind the template staying "safe" from accidental restructuring.
  • A .mogrt file is a self-contained archive bundling a serialized copy of the composition's render data plus the exposed-control mapping and, optionally, embedded font files — a real packaging step, not a reference back to the original .aep. This is exactly why deleting or moving the original After Effects project afterward has no effect on Premiere projects that already placed the .mogrt: everything needed to render it (short of a live AE connection) was copied into the package at export time, unlike Dynamic Link (Module 2), which requires the source .aep to keep existing and stay reachable.
  • Font packaging exists because the .mogrt's renderer needs the actual glyph outline data to lay out text, and a font not installed on the editing machine simply has no glyph data available to it. Bundling copies the font file itself into the package (subject to the font's own license terms, which is why the export dialog flags licensing) so the renderer can resolve the text layer's font reference locally regardless of what's installed system-wide — without bundling, an editor on a machine lacking that font sees a font-substitution fallback instead of the designed typeface, the identical missing-font failure mode from Level 1's Adobe Fonts module, just triggered by a different distribution path.
  • Master Properties versus per-instance overrides is the identical reference-with-local-override pattern used throughout this course (a paragraph style's local override, a master-page item's page-level override): the placed instance stores its own copy of each exposed control's current value, initialized from the template's defaults at placement time, and independently editable thereafter. That's why three placed instances of the same lower-third .mogrt can carry three different names simultaneously — each instance's control values are its own data, not a live read of one shared source, even though all three trace back to the identical underlying animation package.
  • Update Motion Graphics Template re-imports the newer .mogrt package's render data while attempting to preserve each existing placed instance's already-set control values by matching control names between the old and new template. This is why renaming an exposed control between versions (say, Accent Color to Bar Color) can silently reset that field to its new default on update — the matching is done by the control's name/ID in the exposed-property mapping, not by any semantic understanding of what the control represents.

Exercise

Build a lower-third or title element in After Effects, expose at least three controls (one text, one color, one numeric/slider) via Essential Graphics, and export it as a .mogrt. Place it in a Premiere sequence at least twice with different values on each instance, confirming both instances animate identically while showing different text/color content.