The end of the year is near, so let’s take a look at some TouchDesigner projects and tools that inspired the community in 2025. Let’s go!
Another year is almost gone, and it’s time to look back, but not out of nostalgia. (I also lost five kilos thanks to the diet, but let’s not digress). 2025 has been a great year for the TouchDesigner community, from the unveiling of the new POP operator family to thousands of wonderful projects around the world.
In this article, I would like to highlight four projects and four tools that I found particularly interesting over the course of the year. It’s a personal selection, of course, so feel free to share your own list too.
TouchDesigner Projects
TUNDRA
TUNDRA is a new media art collective focused on light and sound installations, comprised of Alexandr Sinitsa, Klim Sukhanov, and Semyon Perevoshchikov. Personally, I am fascinated by the way they use space and light to create multimedia environments.
The Day We Left Field is a series of immersive installations inspired by the concept of nature, where “blades of grass rhythmically keep wavering upside down in a cocoon of sound and visual effects, forming a floating meadow” (as described on the project’s website).
The overall result is truly impressive and conceptually very effective. Needless to say, I would love to take a look at their TouchDesigner patches.
The Poet Engineer
Kat Zhang, also known as The Poet Engineer, is a media artist, engineer, and researcher focused on intangible user interfaces, data visualization, and AI. I have to admit that I had not heard of her until early 2025, but I definitely appreciate her work now.
On her Instagram profile, Kat showcases an impressive collection of examples demonstrating how hand tracking can be used for user interfaces and data visualization. It’s a fascinating mix of gesture recognition systems, UI elements and data-driven visuals.
Undoubtedly, she is a master of her craft and I guess she makes extensive use of MediaPipe for tracking purposes. Highly recommended!
Lucio Arese
While searching for information about Lucio Arese online, I discovered that he is incredibly talented in many fields beyond TouchDesigner. Maybe it’s because he’s from Cuneo, Italy, not far from Turin, my hometown.
Jokes aside, I came across Lucio’s work on his Instagram channel and was genuinely impressed. Since I love data visualization and music, his sound visualization projects really resonated with me. He combines advanced analytical techniques with stunning visual representations. It’s one of the most inspiring data-driven projects I have seen this year.
Monocolor
Marian Essl, also known as Monocolor, is a digital artist recognized for his algorithmic visuals exploring the intersection of sound and space.
Entangled Structures is one of my favorite Monocolor projects. It’s a monochromatic virtual abstract sculpture composed of flowing strings that continuously shift their positions, interacting with one another and forming evocative landscapes.
I really appreciate this project. And needless to say, I would love to take a peek at his TouchDesigner workflow.
TouchDesigner tools
StreamDiffusionTD
Artificial intelligence was the most talked-about technology of 2025, including in TouchDesigner. And, in my humble opinion, StreamDiffusion is one of the most interesting AI systems out there.
StreamDiffusion is a diffusion pipeline designed for real time, interactive generation. It’s an open source project freely available on GitHub. However, since it’s a complex system with a lot of technical depth, integrating it into TouchDesigner can be quite challenging.
Fortunately, Lyell Hintz, also known as DotSimulate, released StreamDiffusionTD, a TouchDesigner operator for real time image generation using the StreamDiffusion pipeline. You can get it by supporting his work on Patreon.
Those without a high-end local GPU that wish to try StreamDiffusion can use a hosted version of StreamDiffusionTD provided by Daydream, a company working in AI with a focus on creatives. Daydream also powers a community hub where TouchDesigner creators can discover, download, and remix high-quality StreamDiffusionTD projects shared by other artists and developers.
Get Our 7 Core TouchDesigner Templates, FREE
We’re making our 7 core project file templates available – for free.
These templates shed light into the most useful and sometimes obtuse features of TouchDesigner.
They’re designed to be immediately applicable for the complete TouchDesigner beginner, while also providing inspiration for the advanced user.
Sora-2
In late September, OpenAI released a new version of Sora, its video generation system. Compared to the first release, Sora 2 is now capable of creating extremely detailed videos with advanced features and customization options. How can we integrate it into TouchDesigner?
Well, the answer is Sora-2, a TouchDesigner component developed by uisato. It supports text-to-video and image-to-video generation, both 16:9 and 9:16 formats, negative prompts and optional seeds, as well as async auto-download and auto-playback.
Since it’s clear that a lot of hard work went into this project, I highly recommend supporting the developer by downloading it through uisato’s Patreon page.
TLMODS
Artificial intelligence is a fascinating topic. But most of the time, we just need tools that help us work smarter and faster in TouchDesigner.
That is where TLMODS comes in. It is a collection of custom tools developed by TheTouchLab to enhance your workflow in TouchDesigner.
The project is currently in beta and includes seven tools. You can download the project files from this community post on the Derivative website. I am still learning some of its features, but I can assure you these tools are truly valuable.
FunctionStore_tools
Last but not least, here is a project that can help improve the user experience in TouchDesigner.
FunctionStore_tools is a collection of TouchDesigner hacks and utilities designed to boost workflow efficiency and modify the software’s default behavior. As stated on the project’s GitHub repository, “the design principle of these tools is to be seamlessly integrated with the user experience of TD, meaning the learning curve and adaptability of these tools should be easy for any level of TD user.”
Highly recommended!
Wrap Up
Writing this article has been a great experience for me, because – more than ever – it gave me the chance to appreciate the work of artists and developers pushing the boundaries of digital art.
This was just a short collection of projects and tools. As always, the sky is the limit.
