Appreciating Templater Rig

Every so often, a first-time Dataclay customer will purchase a perpetual Templater Rig license not knowing that it can’t batch output versioned media. This is an unfortunate scenario that is simply a consequence of offering this entry-level product which, none-the-less, serves a vital role in the Templater ecosystem. While Rig is not designed to batch process output from After Effects, it does offer some amazing features which can’t be found in any other product on the market at its price.

First, Rig is fully integrated with Google Sheets just like Pro and Bot. Being able to preview all of your versioning data from Google Sheets inside After Effects is a tremendous value. And while Rig is not capable of batch output, it is capable of rendering individual jobs using After Effect’s built-in render options. I think many users fail to realize this capability, and for small versioning projects, Rig is a powerful solution.

Second, Rig is a strategic part of creative team Templater workflows. Without the existence of Rig, multi-user Templater customers would need to purchase additional activations of Pro or Bot simply to preview data and test rigged template (ie. Autograf) designs. Rig is a one-time purchase that is so affordable, many customers choose to purchase Rig licenses for every member of their team.

Third, Rig is not only a perpetual license, it also includes free upgrades anytime new versions of Tempalter are released. The Dataclay development team puts hundreds of hours into maintaining and improving Templater code – much of which is available in Rig.

Finally, there are tons of interesting uses for Rig that many users have never considered, but should. For example, did you know Templater can be used for live events? Templater Rig can be used with After Effects and NDI to facilitate live compositing workflows incorporating live data from sources like Google Sheets or JSON feeds. Or how about using Templater Rig to version AE content embedded in Adobe Premiere using the Dynamic Link feature?

Templater Rig is an incredible value, and an essential part of many of our customers’ workflows. Hopefully this overview of some of Rig’s features and use cases will help you spot opportunities to take advantage of this uniquely valuable tool.