How to Create and Use Templates

You can create a template from a layer or from cells. You can store anything available in the Timeline or Node view as a template.

Creating a Template

The Timeline view and the Node view display different information about a scene and its structure. To make sure a character's main template, also called the master template, is rigged exactly the way it was meant to be when it's imported into a scene, it should be created with all the connections, effects, composites, nodes, pegs, groups, drawings, timings, as well as all the other information in the scene it was originally created in.

Because the Node view is the most faithful representation of a rig's structure, it is recommended to create master templates from the Node view rather than the Timeline view. Templates created from the Timeline view may lose the extra connections, effects and groupings that are visible in the Node view but which aren't properly connected to its main structure.

NOTEIf you create a template by selecting layers in the layers list of the Timeline view, or by selecting nodes in the Node view, your template with include the layer as well as all the drawings it contains, even drawings that are not exposed in the scene's timeline, whereas creating a template by selecting specific cells in the Timeline will only save the selected drawings in the template.
NOTETo rename a template once it is created, right-click on the symbol and select Rename.

Importing a Template