Saving a Project as a Template

In Lesson 8, you worked with the Template Browser and created a new project from one of Motion's prebuilt templates. Did you know that you can also save your own projects as templates? In fact, you can save any of your favorite projects as templates. Let's open the 11-5 Template project and save it as a template.

NOTE

All of the save features in the trial version of the software are disabled, including the features for saving projects as templates. If you're using the trial version, you won't be able to save the project as a template.

1.	Open the project 11-5 Template. This project should look a lot like the one you just finished. The main difference is that I changed the names of the objects in the Layer list to make them more template friendly.
2.	Press Cmd-4 to open the Layer list and see the renamed layers. Now all that's left to do is save the project as a template. The thumbnail image that represents your template is the current frame at the time you save the template. When choosing the thumbnail, it's a good idea to use a frame that shows the final position of the animation. Let's move the playhead to the marker that I placed near the end of the Timeline.
3.	Press Option-Cmd-right arrow to move the playhead to the marker.
4.	Choose File > Save as Template. The Template window appears so that you can name your template and choose the collection to which you want to add it.
5.	Type 4x4 stills to center in the field to name the template. The prebuilt Motion collections that come with the application are locked to prevent them from being modified or deleted. Templates must be saved in a collection, so to save your template, you'll first need to create a new collection.
6.	Click the New Collection button at the lower left of the Template window. The New Collection window opens.
7.	Type Moving Images in the New Collection name field; then click the Create button. In the Template window, the selection in the Collection pop-up menu changes to Moving Images. The Create QuickTime Preview check box should be checked by default; Motion will create a QuickTime preview of your template that you can see in the Template Browser.
8.	Click the Save button to save your template so that it appears in the Template Browser. An Export window appears showing the progress of the QuickTime preview that you're including with your template.
9.	Close the finished project. Now take a look at your saved template in the Template Browser.
10.	Choose File > Open Template.
11.	In the Template Browser, choose the Moving Images collection; then select your "4x4 stills to center" template to preview it.

Now you know how to save your best projects as templates that you can reuse in future projects.