Touchdesigner TOX for Picking Color and Grabbing Screen Shots
This TOX uses a custom Mouse In CHOP to work across desktops and outside of Touch's window. Touchdesigner must be the active application for this to work.
Please find more info on how to install Custom Operators here
This TOX only works on Windows. To make it work on Mac, you will either need to write a similar Mouse In CHOP for Mac or use Python to achieve something that's some what equivalent. You basically need to grab the coordinates of your mouse with respect to all your desktops as a single space.
The only difference between the color picking mode and the screen grabbing mode is if you move the mouse while holding down the Control key.
To use this TOX:
- Copy the tox into your project directory, in the same folder as your project toe file.
- Copy the MouseInAltCHOP.dll into your Plugins directory, either your system level Plugins folder or your project level Plugins folder. For details on Plugins/Custom Operators, Click here
- Restart Touchdesigner, so, it can load the MouseInAltCHOP into memory.
- Drag and Drop ScreenGrab.tox into your project.
During any of the following operations, before you let go the Control key, you can cancel the operation by pressing the Shift key.
- Activate the Tox by clicking on the On/Off Toggle, under Settings
- Right click on the Tox, and select View
- Mouse over the color you want to pick. Note: Make sure the color is the one you are looking for by checking the Viewer you opened in Step 2. Due to the fact that this component is pixel accurate, you may actually be mousing over the anti-aliased edge color. Always verify the color in the viewer.
- Press and Release the Control key. DO NOT MOVE THE MOUSE during this.
The colors you picked will be outputted to output 2 and 3. Output 2 gives you the colors in a DAT, with the RGBA values. You can easily take this and generate a color table for a RampTOP. Output 3 gives you the color(s) as a single image, laid out in a grid.
- Activate the Tox by clicking on the On/Off Toggle, under Settings
- Right click on the Tox, and select View
- Move your mouse to one of the corners of the area you want to capture.
- Press and HOLD the Control key.
- Move your mouse to the opposite(diagonally) corner of the area you want to capture.
- Let go of the Control key.
You can select the images you have captured with the Screen Shot Output Index slider under the Settings page.
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On/Off - This turns the component On and Off. In Off, the ScreenGrab TOP and Control key capturing are turned off. It's recommended to leave it on Off when not using, considering how often the Control key can be pressed while using Touchdesigner.
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Total Screeen Shots - This is a read-only parameter. This parameter simply reflects the number of inputs to the switch TOP. You can use this parameter to trigger things like, auto save last captured screenshot, etc.
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Screen Shot Output Index - This parameter is bound to the switch TOP inside of the component. By default, it will display the last captured screen shot. But you can use it to display any of the screen shots that you have captured so far.
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Clear* - Self explanatory.
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Output 1 TOP - One of the captured screen shots. Selectable using the Screen Shot Output Index slider.
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Output 2 DAT - All of the picked colors so far in a table. Listing their RGBAs. You can attach a position column to this, and you can use it directly in a Ramp TOP.
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Output 3 TOP - All of the picked colors so far, laid out in a grid.