Converting Effects into Generators

In my efforts to convert my Photo Album Effect into a Photo Album Generator I discovered something that might be worth sharing for those of you that make their own effects for FCPX.

First I was trying to copy everything in the Motion Effect project and paste it in a new Motion Generator project. Unfortunately none of the Rigs copied over and many of the Links were broken.
I almost gave up because this meant that I would have to start from scratch in a blank Generator project. Rebuilding the broken links would have been a nightmare, especially because it was such a long time ago when I designed the Photo Album Effect.
I decided to make a copy of the Photo Album folder in my Movies/Motion Templates/My Effects folder file and I placed this copied folder in my Movies/Motion Templates/My Generators folder.
Next I openend this folder and changed the extension, so the "Photo Album.moef" file became "Photo Album.motn".
I opened this renamed project in Motion and in the Layers pane I scrolled down to find the Effect Source layer. This is the placeholder for the clip in FCPX you apply an effect to. Since Generators can't have such a Layer, I replaced the Effect Source layer with a Drop Zone and had only to reconstruct the links and published parameters for that layer.
The rest of the project, including all the Rigs, Links and Published parameters was still in tact.
At this moment I have the Photo Album as a Generator.
In the near future I will have time to see if it is possible to enhance the functionality with multiple Drop Zones. When it is ready I will post it in the free Templates subforum.
Being able to convert an Effect into a Generator this way is a huge time saver.

Robbert-Jan