Grass Valley After Effects Plug-in Vertigo Suite v.4.9 - Manual (Page 24)

After Effects Plug-in User Manual 3-9
Miranda Animation (Merge Mode) option
Layer tag columns
Merge Mode allows you to generate multiple versions of a promo for different channels, days
and times by substituting the text, image, or clip associate with a layer in the After Effects
project and then rendering each variation as a separate as animation or video file.
To make layer substitutions, you must first be sure that the layer name in the After Effects
project must contain the tag name. Figure
3-10 demonstrates that the layer’s tag name in the
After Effects project must be preceded with < and followed by a />. To rename a layer in After
Effects, select the layer and press the E
NTER key. This allows you to rename the layer.
Figure 3-10. Tag names for the layers in the After Effects project
Once the layer names in the After Effects project contain the properly formatted tag names,
you can add a column for each layer that is to be modified. The column headings must be
identically named to the tag names given to the layers in the After Effects project, but
without the < and />.
Each row after the header row should contain the information that will replace the current
content of the layer tag. Figure
3-11 demonstrates that the spreadsheet contains four (4) layer
tag columns and that the first animation rendered will feature the following substitutions:
•
will be replaced by Monday
• will be replaced by 5:00pm
• will be replaced by Les Papous
• will be replaced by ‘V001.tga’
Figure 3-11. Layer tag columns
N
OTE
When replacing an image or a clip, the complete path to the graphic needs to be specified. There
can be as many columns of layer tags as required, but they must be from the third column onwards.
When replacing a clip, the animation plays out the clip for the duration of the composition.