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mariob94721405
mariob94721405
Participant
December 5, 2017
Answered

How to select One " color " property on several Layers ?

  • December 5, 2017
  • 5 replies
  • 4169 views

Hello

I have hundreds of Shape Layers and I want to select only "Fill Color"
If I write Color in the search bar, Fill color and Stroke Color appears.

I will not select a property by clicking more than a hundred times ...

Thanks for your help

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer Roei Tzoref

    if the expression to the color property is to create a color rig, Ray Dynamic Color 2 - aescripts + aeplugins - aescripts.com  will do that for you. you can create a palette from all the colors and change it to any color you want with a nice swatch panel.

    as for other properties, unfortunately the search function in the timeline is not smart and cannot add or subtract strings. ,maybe you should have rigged it to a controller from the start if you plan to change many layers at once. but please ask for smarter search functions here: Feature Request/Bug Report Form

    5 replies

    Kevin-Monahan
    Community Manager
    Kevin-MonahanCommunity Manager
    Community Manager
    February 16, 2018

    MarioB, you have not returned to the discussion, so I marked Roei's as correct. Our experts have offered you numerous solutions that would assist your project. Let us know if your problem is not solved.

    Thanks,
    Kevin

    Kevin Monahan - Sr. Community & Engagement Strategist – Pro Video and Audio
    Kevin-Monahan
    Community Manager
    Kevin-MonahanCommunity Manager
    Community Manager
    December 20, 2017

    Hi MarioB,

    Did you get this problem solved with the help of our experts? Please let us know.

    Thanks,

    Kevin

    Kevin Monahan - Sr. Community & Engagement Strategist – Pro Video and Audio
    P.M.B
    P.M.B
    Legend
    December 6, 2017

    I think I understand.

    Say you have an expression on the fill color of a shape.

    You would select that fill color attribute, go to Edit>copy expression only, then select the fill color of another layer and paste that expression onto that shape layer's fill color.

    But what if you have hundreds of shape layers?

    It would take forever to select each fill color individually and then paste the expression.

    Simply selecting the layer alone does not work because this creates a new group.

    And even if the search bar revealed only the fill color as you you asked in your original post,  you would still have to select each attribute individually.

    So how do you select a specific attribute on hundreds of layers at once so you can paste an expression?

    There may be a way to do this natively in AE but I do not know it.

    And you would think there'd be a ton of scripts that could do this but I only know of one.

    It's a feature in a script called Midas by Mt. Mograph.

    It's called "Grab" and it works by selecting the attribute on one layer, then shift selecting all the other layers of which you want to select that attribute & running the script.

    The script costs $30 and has many other features which you may or may not find useful.

    Honestly, for me the Grab feature alone, is worth the $30 because I know of no other way, & no other script that does what it does.

    I have some ethical issues with this plug-in due to the fact that it pushes content and updates silently...which infuriates me but that's just me.  I mean who do they think they are, Adobe or something?  And would not recommend it

    if not for the fact that it does exactly what you seem to be asking for.

    Maybe if I have interpreted & described your problem correctly somebody with more knowledge than me will know of a way to "Grab"

    attributes the way you need.

    If not then I DO recommend the "Grab" function Midas by Mt. Mograph which now has an option to turn off auto update thanks to me personally raising heck about it.   I believe it has a 7 day free trial if you want to try it out.

    WARNING: THIS VIDEO HAS AUDIO

    ~Gutterfish
      Dave_LaRonde
      Dave_LaRonde
      Inspiring
      December 5, 2017

      Select all the shape layer you want, and THEN search for Color.  See what happens.

      And while you're at it, change the Fill color on one layer while they're all selected, and see what happens.

      Roei Tzoref
      Roei Tzoref
      Legend
      December 5, 2017

      you could just select all of them and use the tools menu for changing the color and it will change for all of them (for all the fills in all the shapes):

      if you need more selective control you might want to consider a script to help you with that. like this one:

      Explode Shape Layers 3 - aescripts + aeplugins - aescripts.com

      "Now, your new shape layers probably have a tonne of strokes and fills that need adjusting-- that's what Select Fills and Select Strokes are for. One-click buttons to select all fills or all strokes in your comp, or hold shift to find any fills or strokes with the same colour as the selected."

      mariob94721405
      mariob94721405Author
      Participant
      December 5, 2017

      Thank you for your answers

      It works.
      But I do not want to change the color. I want to add an expression.
      This is a problem I already had. For another property.

      If I have two properties with the same name in different effects, I have no way to select the properties of a single effect type.
      With some layers, I select manually.
      But with many layers ...

      R
      Community Expert
      Rick GerardCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      December 6, 2017

      if the expression to the color property is to create a color rig, Ray Dynamic Color 2 - aescripts + aeplugins - aescripts.com  will do that for you. you can create a palette from all the colors and change it to any color you want with a nice swatch panel.

      as for other properties, unfortunately the search function in the timeline is not smart and cannot add or subtract strings. ,maybe you should have rigged it to a controller from the start if you plan to change many layers at once. but please ask for smarter search functions here: Feature Request/Bug Report Form


      If I have two properties with the same name in different effects, I have no way to select the properties of a single effect type.

      With some layers, I select manually.

      But with many layers ...

      I'm not sure if I follow you but if you want to take a property from a layer above you can use index - 1 instead of the name of the layer. You can also just use the number of the layer.

      For example, you have shape layer 1 and it has a red color for Rectangle 1>Fill Color 1. You put another shape layer below shape layer 1 and want the color to match. All you have to do is add this expression to Shape Layer 1>Rectangle 1>Fill Color 1:

      thisComp.layer(index - 1).content("Rectangle 1").content("Fill 1").color

      You can actually apply this expression to any color property. It is looking for the Rectangle 1 Fill 1 color in the layer above. If you apply the expression to a layer below that has a Rectangle 1 Fill Color 1 in it you can stack as many as you like.

      Another approach would be to use the layer number of the master color layer. Now it would not matter where the other layers were, the color property would always look for thisComp.layer(3).content("Rectangle 1").content("Fill 1").color in layer 3.

      Does that make sense?

      As for searching for a specific color, unfortunately, you cannot enter color = [1, 0, 0, 1] in the timeline search to look for all colors that equal red. You can type in Fill Color or Rectangle 1 Fill 1 to quickly find all Rectangle 1 Fill 1 properties in your comp.

      Gutter-Fish said:

      So how do you select a specific attribute on hundreds of layers at once so you can paste an expression?

      There may be a way to do this natively in AE but I do not know it.

      Well if you wanted to find all layers that have Rectangle 1 Fill 1 or just Fill 1 you could type that in the search field then hold down the Cmnd/Ctrl key and select every Fill 1 in every layer you wanted to change, then change 1 or paste an expression only in each of them.

      The Grab Script is a great one to have and it automates the search and Ctrl/Cmnd select, but if you want to paste the same expression to a bunch of different attributes like Fill color in one layer and Stroke color in another and the first Change To color in the Change Color effect in another layer then the search for the property, add a comma and search for another property, then Ctrl/Cmnd + select method is the only one I know of.

      BTW you can get the Midas script here: Midas — Mt. Mograph

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