Useful TouchDesigner Operators: COMPs

In the previous posts in this series, we looked at useful TOPs, SOPs, CHOPs, and DATs. Next up on our list is the unique Component family of operators. COMPs are somewhat of a special case in TouchDesigner, in that they cover a wide variety of functionality and often contain their own networks. Unlike the previous families we’ve covered, there’s no generator/filter differentiation between COMPs. Instead, there are a variety of sub-families based on their functionality, including 3D Objects, Panels, Other, and Dynamics. In this post, we’ll take a look at a number of useful COMPs in TouchDesigner, including operators used for 3D rendering, creating user interfaces, replicating operators, running physics simulations, and more.

Useful COMPs: 3D Objects

The 3D Objects sub-family of COMPs are all related to creating 3D rendered scenes in TouchDesigner. Any time you want to work in 3D in TouchDesigner, you’ll probably be using operators from this sub-family, whether that’s setting up for rendering with the Geometry COMP, or adding a Camera COMP to view the scene through.

Geometry COMP

The Geometry COMP allows you to render 3D surfaces or 3D Objects in conjunction with a Render TOP. Light COMPs, Camera COMPs and another of other components affect the scene, but are not visible in the rendered output. Geometry Components will contain (or be connected to, as in the example above) a SOP network, which will define the 3D surface or shape. To apply a texture to the geometry’s surface, a MAT operator is used.

Light COMP

The Light COMP is used to cast light into a 3D scene and has various parameters you can adjust to control the light seen in the final render, including color, brightness, and light type (point, cone, or distant). This COMP also includes the option to create shadows for objects lit by the light, which are controlled by a number of additional parameters. Multiple lights can be used in the same rendered scene. In the example above, two lights have been added, with each projecting a different color of light. The positions of each light are being controlled independently to cast a different color of light on the top and bottom of the object.

Camera COMP

The Camera COMP behaves like a real-world camera, which is used to render the 3D scene from its point of view. Along with the typical perspective projection view of the 3D scene, the Camera COMP can also create an orthographic projection, and even blend between the two types. As is typical of COMPs, its 3D position can be adjusted and animated. In the example above, the position of the camera is being manipulated by a CHOP network, rather than the position of the geometry itself.

FBX COMP

The FBX COMP lets you import geometry, animations, and scenes using the FBX file format. This means you can use the FBX COMP to import FBX files from software like Maya, 3DS Max, Cinema4D, Houdini, and others. If animations are included in the FBX file, you can use the controls the Play page to initialize, start, and guide the animation.
The example above showcases an imported FBX model of the TouchDesigner logo, which has been placed in a 3D scene and had a material applied to it. In the second example, an FBX file with animation has been imported to showcase how animation playback might look.

Useful COMPs: Panels

When you’re looking to create user interfaces in TouchDesigner, look no further than the Panels sub-family of the COMP family! Here you’ll find a variety of tools for creating 2d control panels and user interfaces, which might include such components as sliders, buttons, text fields, and more.

Container COMP

The Container COMP is the core component of user interface building in TouchDesigner. It groups together any number of buttons, sliders, fields, additional containers and other Panel Components to build an interface. It includes a number of great features for automatically laying out multiple interface components in a grid, as seen in the examples above and below. Children components (components found inside of the main container) can have a variety of alignment, size, and position adjustments applied to them via the Children parameter page of the parent Container COMP.

Button COMP

The Button COMP is used in panels to create interactive buttons of a number of different types. These include on/off, toggle, and momentary buttons, as well as sets of radio/exclusive buttons. It’s common to place the set of radio or exclusive buttons within a container, as they will be interacted with as a group (you can see an example of this on the bottom half of the GIF above).

Slider COMP

The Slide COMP lets you build (you guessed it!) sliders, which can be single axis (horizontally or vertically oriented) or two axis (XY, as seen in the last example above). When set up as a two-axis slider, they will output two channels of data.

Text COMP

The Text COMP is a panel used to display text within a user interface. As seen in the example above, the text can be editable directly within the panel, but it can also be set up to be view-only or able to be selected but not edited. The Text COMP provides a number of options for text formatting, which can include simple single-line strings, multi-line text, numeric values, password entry and more.

Useful COMPs: Other

The “Other” sub-family of components is a bit of a grab bag, but by no means does it contain COMPs that are any less useful than what we’ve covered so far!

Animation COMP

The Animation COMP is used for creating keyframe animation channels. Unlike most of the CHOP family, which can be used to procedurally generate control channels, the Animation COMP lets you specify multiple channels of keyframes for animation. By right clicking on an Animation COMP and choosing Edit Animation…, a special Animation Editor opens (see image below) which is used to add channels and keyframes. Although the Animation COMP can be driven from TouchDesigner’s timeline, it is also possible to output the entirety of the contents as CHOP channels to be driven externally using something like a Timer CHOP. It’s a great tool for those moments when you need the specificity of keyframed animation.

Base COMP

The Base COMP is perhaps the simplest of the Component family — it has no panel parameters or 3D object parameters, and is typically used as a “folder” to contain or group related functionality together. In the example above, we create a Base COMP containing two TOP effects as an example of how one might use the operator. By selecting one or more operators, right clicking on an empty area of the Network Editor and choosing Collapse Selected, you can encapsulate the selected operators inside of a Base COMP. All previous cable connections are maintained, and In/Out nodes are automatically created within the new Base COMP.

Replicator COMP

The Replicator COMP is used to create copies of an operator or component. The number of copies can be specified by a template Table DAT or by the Number of Replicants parameter. As you can see in the example above, the replicated operators can be set up to be slightly different. In this example six Movie File In TOPs are created, but they all have a different movie file loaded based on the content of the template Table DAT.

Window COMP

The Window COMP allows you to create a separate floating or fixed window which displays the contents of a Panel COMP or Node Viewer. Typically, you’ll interact with the Window COMP when setting up your project for Perform Mode, an optimized mode for live performance that renders only one specified Window COMP.

Useful COMPs: Dynamics

The Dynamics sub-family of components is all about physics simulation. In this post, we’ll only be looking at members of a Bullet Dynamics system (Actor, Bullet Solver, and Force COMP) because they have cross platform support, but note that for PC users with an Nvidia GPU the Nvidia Flex Solver COMP is also available.

Actor COMP

The Actor COMP is analogous to a body (or bodies) in a physics system. The Actor COMP must be used in conjunction with a physics solver (like the Bullet Solver COMP seen below). The Actor COMP can be static (not affected by forces and cannot move) or dynamic (moved by forces and can collide with other bodies). In the example above, the ball is a dynamic Actor COMP, while the floor is a static Actor COMP.

Bullet Solver COMP

The Bullet Solver COMP is a part of a Bullet Dynamics system in TouchDesigner. It uses the Bullet Physics API to create a simulation in which actors/bodies (Actor COMP) and forces (Force COMP) operate. The Bullet Solver COMP gives control over “playback” of the simulation, allowing for it to be paused, slowed down or sped up, and restarted. The simulation operates in a vacuum, so there is no air resistance applied to any of the actors.

Force COMP

The Force COMP is used to add forces to a physics solver’s simulation. The Bullet Solver COMP supports linear and rotational forces. The example above is a slightly modified version of the previous example for the Bullet Solver COMP, but with an added Force COMP. The Force COMP is used to apply both linear and rotational forces to the blocks, causing them to rotate and move away from the center of the floor as they fall.

Wrap-Up

As usual, this is just the tip of the iceberg for the COMP family! There are many more operators worth mentioning here, but, well, we had to stop somewhere. We hope that this post has given you a sense of some of the great functionality that the COMP family has to offer.