What is TouchDesigner?

mleaf · 2023-10-21T06:16:07.026Z

Touch Designer is good to understand in relation to its Mom - SideFX Houdini. Houdini is a tool used in VFX for film, but Houdini’s core strength lies in simulation - of particle effects, smoke, fire, fluids, that type of thing. So when you see the Incredible Hulk in a Marvel film smashing up a road and bits of gravel are flying everywhere - that’s probably Houdini.

A couple of folks split of from SideFX and created their own company, comically called ‘derivative’ - and if you were to compare the two softwares - you 'd find similar nomenclature. However a key difference between Houdini and TD is - Houdini projects are sent to a render farm, whereas TD is ‘real-time’.

Render farm meaning, with the high level of realism and detail of polygon count required by production level films, files are sent to a render farm over network to be rapidly rendered and returned to the production house. TD has this spirit of ‘VFX’ and ‘simulation’ at its heart, but however, tweaks the production overheads so everything can run in real-time.

And the benefits of real-time are as everybody states above - interactivity for installations, reactivity for live performance etc. An artist also gains a wysiwyg approach to creation - avoiding a render pipeline in a 3D context and instead, being able to explore and see their results ‘live’.

I think in terms of relevance, TD has been around a while now, emerging in a PC only format, requiring quite a heavy system, to then offering a Mac binary, and also polishing the system requirements overtime, such that anyone could basically dive in and have a play now on a modern MacBook Air. This means also that there’s been time for tutorials to have been amassed, a community to develop around the software, and also changes like the program moving on originally from its own ‘t-script’ code snippet language, to python for function input and relational scripting between nodes.

Further, since the primary developers and company are based in Canada, derivative have regularly participated in for instance, the Mutek festival, offering workshops and training, and seeing artists who use the software participate and perform live in venues such as the SAT.

Ultimately, TD is an extremely powerful and flexible tool that can pretty much handle anything you throw at it, but it is complicated, however the large amount of tutorials available now mean the software is well supported by a large and active community, primarily couched within the live audio-visual performance and interactive installation scenes.

mleaf · 2023-10-21T07:34:18.250Z

I’ll add a couple more things.

Both Houdini and TD are what you call procedural programming environments. You hear this term bandied about a lot, like, in No Man’s Sky planets being ‘procedurally generated’. It’s an interesting term, which I think can get somewhat confused with the term ‘generative’, but ultimately, procedural is just a different programming type, which if u really broke it down can simply mean ‘cause and effect’.

This means an artist creates a chain, or in TD, a ‘network’, and really, net results are the product of what comes before, so changing a node in the chain changes the final output.

This is quite simple, and artist-friendly, if you like. As opposed to say, object oriented programming, where one creates sets of variables, objects, arrays, classes and their associated methods, and then ‘calls’ the objects in question to display based on the input method data. TD still uses these sorts of programmatic elements, such as a data lists, but again in this mapped out procedural way.

I should say I’m a newb, I might not be describing the above in the most accurate way but it’s the point in describing the differences. Likewise, node-based, or visual programming as opposed to text-based.

I personally find TD to be extremely taxing on the mind. It’s possibly just the way I’m wired, and I’ve always felt similarly about max. But there’s an aspect to that procedural generation which can really balloon out - such that I personally begin to feel like a ‘processor’, keeping track of all the settings, digging in to parameter boxes to see what is set, and what is going where. Oddly, visual programming languages are supposed to be more suited to artists, but I always found something like Processing to make much more sense and be more logical.

However TD’s advanatage there is giving you way more bang for your buck, and higher fidelity, for less programmatic or algebraic knowledge as you would require in C++ or Java.

Lately I’ve found Notch to be quite a useable visual based node software. There’s less code-based snippet requirements (if any), enough flexibility built into the system that you can gravitate towards your own style, and it can give you much of that VFX style simulation results but perhaps being even less cognitively demanding than TD. Notch’s only real barrier to entry though is it’s pricing (if you want hi res results), because it seems more geared to the pro touring market, than say the indie AV scene.

fish233 · 2023-10-21T14:55:12.522Z

TD noob here. i’ve dabbled with processing & shaders on and off last years, doubting to make the plunge into TD. been bingewatching tutorials last days and TD feels quite natural to me so far. i’ve been doubting between this and game engines like Godot/unreal. My only gripe, a license is (undertandably) not cheap and its not really clear how this works regarding professional installations. Does the client also needs to buy a license for a remote installation?

thoughtstarZ · 2023-11-10T00:36:14.291Z

I’m coming up on some time off from work. Need to watch this.

hou2touch.com

Audiovisual Production using Bitwig and TouchDesigner Online Course

Early birds are available now. This course explores the fusion of music and visuals through the combined use of Bitwig Studio and TouchDesigner. Students will learn how to create synchronized audiovisual performances, interactive installations,...

proskynesis · 2023-11-24T10:16:07.425Z

It would be really interesting to get a detailed rundown by anyone who made a full liveset with TD and hardware alone. I mean as in playing with a bunch of musicgear and at the same time playing TD. On screen, with midi or with controllers.

Im finally almost finished with the first working system for a show in 2 month but got some shit to solve until its stable for action. Most modulation are auto with lfos and stuff but to make it really weird I need to change some things manually as it is now.
Built a custom component for control and tried to have it as simple as possible but its still a risk to loose focus from the audio.

mimetaur · 2023-11-26T20:29:27.197Z

So I’ve started working on this. I put my tracks together with an MPC and synth, and then use multiple audio ins on my computer for analysis combined with midi in to get tempo and sync data. I’m trying to put each one of my tracks in one big base component that takes audio analysis and sync chop data in and then outputs top data.

I decided I’m going to send touch CC’s and program changes on different tracks on my MPC, and then mute and unmute different combinations to avoid having to having to directly control anything in touch live. It doesn’t change that much in reality, and neither does my music really, so I can keep it pretty simple.

proskynesis · 2023-11-27T10:03:17.885Z

Cool!

mimetaur:

I’m trying to put each one of my tracks in one big base component that takes audio analysis and sync chop data in and then outputs top data.

Care to explain this in more detail? Do you switch between different systems for every track?

Maybe it wasnt necessary but I started a new thread about TD for folks that knows what it is.

https://www.elektronauts.com/t/touchdesigner-for-live-visuals

alechko · 2023-12-17T18:01:33.424Z

anyone knows if I’m allowed to upload videos from non-commercial version of TD to non monetized youtube channel? or is it considered commercial and I’d need a commercial license anyways?

re5et · 2023-12-17T20:56:01.920Z

This persons work is nice , I think minimal music works nicely in techy style glitch visuals

Instagram

Hiroki Okamoto on Instagram: "#beatgraffiti With the support of...

1,113 likes, 10 comments - v0id_scuy on October 31, 2023: "#beatgraffiti With the support of AMCJ(@amcj_official), I will have AV live performances and wor..."

kirlian · 2024-04-07T17:34:16.965Z

I first got into TouchDesigner via Amon Tobin’s ISAM project. Here’s an article on Derivative’s own site discussing the application built in TD, the projection mapping et cetera, as well as some video of it in action.

There’s a decent book from Pakt publishing which goes in depth into Max/MSP in conjunction with TD that is pretty good, if you like learning from books. pppanik has some good tutorials on youtube for creating obligatory generative pieces

Moonwax · 2024-04-07T17:40:08.431Z

My friend is learning it heavily and sometimes I help to render some bits (because it’s heavy on CPU/GPU).
I used to work with such environments like VVVV and Processing in the past. From that perspective I find TD much friendlier to a user (no need to dive into coding, the UI is better, the primitives are not that utilitarian / low level). The only annoying part sometimes is esoteric third mouse button click to navigate, but it’s manageable

alechko · 2024-04-07T17:41:58.668Z

Moonwax:

third mouse button click to navigate

wdym? like around the grid?

Moonwax · 2024-04-07T18:40:39.948Z

just something in the interface, like zooming out or exiting from the sub-patch, nevermind

Inakito · 2024-04-27T17:46:51.519Z

goldfarb:

Houdini - like Maya/3D Studio Max/blender/Cinema4D etc
its a fully procedural node based system -

That could get some people the wrong idea as even if 3dMax, Blender, Cinema4D, or even Maya has parts that could work procedurally and be node based, they are not fully procedurally as Houdini is
(Just my two cents being involved in CGI industry for the last 15+ years).

goldfarb · 2024-04-27T22:08:08.038Z

sorry…should have put a ‘.’ after ‘etc’
this ‘it’ I was referring to was Houdini

just lazy typing - I’ve been in VFX for 20+ years (and work for SideFX)

Inakito · 2024-04-28T02:29:49.437Z

Cool! I just thought it would be of help clarifying

alechko · 2024-05-11T15:51:57.671Z

anyone else having issue with TD freezing on quit all of a sudden? can’t find any info about it but it basically started hanging every time and I have to Force Quit it, have no idea what happened, just started being like this…

alechko · 2024-06-15T14:33:58.116Z

been working on this flying thingy patch, wish I had better skills to draft a spaceship, still, TD is lots of fun

alechko · 2024-06-30T15:14:42.089Z

love this software, I can easily spend hours with it (compression does not do justice here)

(can’t add more replies where are all the TD users to bring this thread to life?)

for anyone using SOPs, found this very helpful cheat-sheet post in the TD forum, it has pics for most things to help understand better the function of the SOP

TouchDesigner forum – 28 Jul 22

SOP Cheat Sheet (w Pics; Wiki mode)

I can never remember what all the SOPs do, so I’ve been meaning to make a cheat sheet for myself There are ~95 SOPs here. Ctrl+F to search the post. Remember you can also bookmark this thread using the forum bookmark function. Add The Add SOP can...

Reading time: 9 mins 🕑 Likes: 27 ❤

dhunterrr · 2025-02-28T18:08:50.952Z

Is this still the go to guide for learning TouchDesigner? Or does anyone recommend other resources for learning it?

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFrhecWXVn5862cxJgysq9PYSjLdfNiHz

I am particularly interested in getting to the point of using gesture recognition (mediapipe) or touchscreen device (phone/tablet) as an input surface to affect a video.