Auto Dot Texture generatation?....

[Kyle_Grace]

I am trying to generate dot textures that are grid aligned (see image 1) from simple images such as water reflections etc (see image 2)...

Currently we're doing it by hand which is time consuming. Does anyone know of Max or Photoshop script that would do this? Could I generate a texture by distributing particles according to RGB values?

Particles and maxscript is not my strong point so I'd appreciate any ideas or pointers.

Thanks in advance,

[miraldo]

You can use the Color Halftone filter in Photoshop. This is what I got from your image, but you can change de dots sizes by applying a different contrast to the image.

[andrewjohn81]

first....does the halftone patter work in afterEffects? If so, you can get pretty far by creating an expression to look at the image's value for dot size.

Otherwise, you Might be able to write an expression along with a clever stack of something like mosaic, grid, blur(to make the blocks round), threshold, levels, and some clever blending modes. This could then be an animated image or you could just change the image any time you want.

Or you might just pay someone to write a script for you if it doesn't already exist. It really shouldn't be that hard. Although, if it's a one-off then i'd forget all those ideas altogether. ha

[andrewjohn81]

Ah, I found the effect I was looking for. I looked in the effects gallery, but of course it wasn't there.

Use CC Ball Action. With some basic tweaking you can get solid balls, white. Use that as a layer mask. The layer below, use Mosaic with the tiles being just larger than the balls.

OK, that takes care of all the balls being the same size.
If you shift click on the stopwatch of the ball size you can make an expression that will change the size of the ball. Only thing is, I'm not sure you can change the size for different parts of the image. That would be Really nice though.