dynamic eye dropper

[Mike Clasby]

If you have CS3 you should be able to do it with this:

https://www.motionscript.com/design-guide/sample-image.html

Dan is sampling the color of the area under to Solid, then using fill to color the solid.

If no CS3, then…

There is a “Yikes, I can’t believe I’m doing this” work around, like this:

Layer 1- New solid 100×100 named “dropper”, I choose red for this, so it’s easy to find. Mask off with Pen Tool so the point of the dropper (I just did a simple triangle) is touching the Anchor Point, or in the middle of the layer. Wherever we move this it will sample the color of the video layer below.

Layer 2- Video Layer. This will become the “Solid” as we’ll fill it with the sampled color, with the Effect>Render>Eye Dropper Fill. It maybe somewhere else in a newer version of AE, I’m on AE6.5.

I resized this layer, Scale to 20%, so you can see around it to sample, otherwise it blocks the view when sampling.

After you apply Eye Dropper Fill, add an expression to Sample Point, Alt-Click the Sample Point Stopwatch, then pickwhip to the “dropper” Position, to get:

thisComp.layer(“dropper”).position

Or you can just Copy the expression, Alt-Click the Sample Point Stopwatch and Paste in that expression.

Layer 3- Duplicate of Video Layer, so you can see what to sample.

This is just so you can see what’s being sampled. We’re really sampling layer 2, but it’s also changing it’s color, so we need this third layer to really see what we have. I realize this sounds incredibly unclear, but it works. Anyway, if you’re still with me, wherever you move that wedge layer named “dropper” the second layer down will change to that color. Incredibly this seems to work even when the layers are 3D.

Hopefully you have CS3 and don’t need this work around.

[Brennanc]

Wow, thanks! Fortunately, I do have CS3 😉

[Brennanc]

One more quick issue related to this.
I’m actually trying to get Dan’s expression (https://www.motionscript.com/design-guide/sample-image.html) to work in Particular. There is a particle option called “color fill” that allows you to specify what color to fill custom particles with. The only problem is that for some reason Dan’s expression, which works beautifully on any other layer, doesn’t do the trick in this circumstance. It may be that Particular doesn’t support this new variable, but I thought it was worth it to ask.

Thanks!

[Brennanc]

Oh, I figured it out. I just link the color to the fill effect of a different layer running Dan’s expression.

Thanks anyway:)

[Jerzy Drozda jr]

You might want to check out my CE PixelSampler tutorial.
https://maltaannon.com/after-effects/ce-pixelsampler/

After getting a color you can just add a Fill effect to
a solid and link the Fill Color to the value of
my CE PixelSampler just by using a pickwip.

Cheers

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