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TouchDesigner Tutorial: Viewer Background Settings
TouchDesigner Tutorial 12: Viewer Background Settings
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TouchDesigner Beginner Course Content
As you were going through the last tutorial introducing you to the CHOP family, you may have wondered why your version of the network has a checkerboard background rather than the black background that you saw in the previous tutorials.
This has to do with a setting in TouchDesigner that we have the ability to change.
By default in TouchDesigner, you’ll see this checkerboard pattern layered behind your texture to show you that there is some level of transparency contained within it. So, if you don’t see the checkerboard, you have no transparency in your particular texture. If you do see the checkerboard, there is some level of transparency.
We have the ability to change this if we want to via the Edit Preferences dialogue. That is Alt + p if you want to use the shortcut, or go to Edit – Preferences.
On a Mac, you have to open up the TouchDesigner drop-down in the Mac menu bar at the top and choose Preferences from there.
From there, head over to the TOPs page. You’ll notice that we have a setting called Viewer Background. By default, this is set to Checkerboard.
If you set this to Black and then choose Save, you’ll see that the checkerboard texture has been replaced with a black backdrop.
In general, especially for beginners to the program, I would not recommend using this viewer background mode because it’s not easy to then identify where transparency is located within your texture. It’s very easy to confuse a texture that has transparency with a texture that does not.
In general, I recommend for beginner users to set this Viewer Background to Checkerboard (which is the default behaviour).
I hope that clears up any potential questions that you may have had as you were working through the Intro to CHOPs tutorial.
Next, let’s move onto COMPs.
About The Author
Elburz Sorkhabi
I possess a deep knowledge in many professional fields from creative arts, technology development, to business strategy, having created solutions for Google, IBM, Armani, and more. I'm the co-founder of The Interactive & Immersive HQ. Yo!
Python Advanced
General summary
Building off of previous Python workshops, this class aims to demystify a few of the elements often used when doing advanced Python development work in TouchDesigner. From using storage to writing your own extensions we’ll work through the several concepts that will help you better leverage Python in TouchDesigner for installations and events. From the conceptual to the concrete, by the end of the workshop you will have both worked with abstract concepts in the textport and created a functioning tool for saving presets.
Instructor
Matthew Ragan
What’s included?
- Over 5 hours of HD video
- TouchDesigner 099 project files and examples
Workshop objectives
- Understand functions and classes in Python
- Learn how to use list comprehensions in TouchDesigner
- Deploy Python Storage inside of TouchDesigner
- Build extensions in TouchDesigner to build your own components
- Build a powerful and flexible preset systems using extensions
- Learn about dependencies, properties, and attributes of extensions
Pre-requisites
- Basic knowledge of TouchDesigner
- Basic-to-Intermediate Python in TouchDesigner
Widgets 101
General summary
We all know user interfaces in TouchDesigner are hard. If you’ve taken our Perfect User Interfaces training you’ll know all the ins-and-outs of creating your own user interface elements from scratch. But what if you need a UI made quickly? What if you want to skip building your own UI pieces? Widgets to the rescue! Widgets are the new and powerful way to make user interfaces quickly and easily in TouchDesigner. What they lack currently in their customization, they make up for in speed of deployment and out-of-the-box features that are easy to access through their custom parameters. Combined with new features to TouchDesigner such as bindings, creating quick, scaling, and aesthetically-pleasing user interfaces is a breeze. .
What’s included?
- Over 2 hours of HD video
- Templates of TouchDesigner projects created in the training
Workshop objectives
- Understand how the Widget system works
- Learn to control the parameters and values of widgets
- Re-scale widget values
- Learn to build a simple UI with widgets
- Discover Bindings and how they work with Widgets
- Create an advanced UI with multiple pages of buttons, sliders, and fields
- Add Material Designer and unicode icons to your Widget UI
- Understand the updating system built into widgets
- Learn to automatically generate a Widget UI for your components
Pre-requisites
- None!
Project Architecture for Pros
Everyone has seen pictures of TouchDesigner projects with hundreds of operators and wires all over the place. Impressive, right?
No! In fact, the opposite is true. If your projects look like this, you’re seriously hampering your TouchDesigner installations – and your potential to consistently get high-profile gigs:
- With hundreds of operators rendering on a single network, your computer will slow to a crawl.
- The messier your project architecture is, the harder it is to collaborate. Eventually, working with a team becomes impossible. Even working alone, keeping everything straight in your head becomes a recipe for disaster.
- Finally, your project is far more likely to break when you update it. This is because everything is coupled together (more on this later).
If you want to create large-scale installations or consistently work on projects in a professional capacity, you need a project architecture that is clean, organized, and easy to use.
The best project architectures – those used by the pros – are so streamlined that they make programming TouchDesigner look boring.
I share how to do this in my training, “TouchDesigner Project Architectures for Professionals.”
In “TouchDesigner Project Architectures for Professionals”, I give you my exact project architecture system – the same system that’s made it possible for me to create installations for Nike, Google, Kanye West, Armani, TIFF, VISA, AMEX, IBM, and more.
With my project architecture system at your disposal, you will:
- Dramatically shorten your development cycles. By reducing complexity in your project architecture, you eliminate unnecessary steps in the development process. And because you’ve created an intuitive working environment, the tasks that remain get done exponentially quicker. Shorter development cycles let you adapt to client demands, as well as take on more advanced – and better paying – gigs.
- Collaborate effectively. Once projects get bigger, a simplified architecture like mine is the only way to work with a team. And effective collaboration is a requirement for anyone looking to work long-term professionally with TouchDesigner.
- Never refactor again. When I first started with TouchDesigner, I would sometimes spend days rebuilding my projects. With my current project architecture, I never have to refactor – and neither will you.
We accomplish this through my 3 core project architecture concepts:
- Standardize: This is part of what enables effective collaboration, which is necessary if you want to create complex, large-scale installations. When you standardize your project architectures, you speed up your development cycle while also minimizing the chances of introducing bugs into your workflow.
- Compartmentalize: By isolating nodes and features into compartments, we can introduce logic into our workflow. This reduces the need to refactor projects down the road, makes it easier to optimize nodes and wires, and promotes the re-use of specific components (i.e. logger, movie player), which dramatically reduces development time.
- Decouple: The cornerstone of collaboration, decoupling lets us separate our functionality from our controls. This enables you to create multiple user interfaces so teams can work on different things in the same project. Without decoupling, any number of issues can occur. Someone could add, rename or change something without the others knowing, creating a chain of bugs down the line. Decoupling also results in far less refactoring of code is necessary.
I’ve spent over 8 years refining my project architecture into an easy-to-implement, repeatable system that any designer can use. Once you learn my system, you’ll be able to take on projects you didn’t think you were capable of. You will also have the confidence you need to land better gigs and meet challenging client demands with flexibility and ease.
How to Use External Data and APIs
Want to level-up your TouchDesigner skills and create projects that can intelligently make content and generative decisions using weather and climate data?
How about installations that span forty-story high-rises that use Twitter posts to prompt generative designs?
Big clients – with big budgets – demand a level of immersion deeper than the use of Microsoft Kinect and Leap Motion interaction. They want to integrate social media, custom web apps and their own CMS to create interactive installations that bring people together in a way they haven’t experienced before.
In short, they want to use technology to become part of the broader conversation.
Fortunately for us, we’re able to deliver this level of immersion by integrating external data sources into our TouchDesigner projects.
The catch? Bringing external APIs into TouchDesigner can be challenging:
- You need some basic Python coding ability to integrate external data sources with TouchDesigner. If you’re like most artists working with TouchDesigner, your coding skills are limited.
- Figuring out how to integrate data natively in TouchDesigner is particularly challenging. While you can find python tutorials that teach you how to get API data, they don’t show you how to get it to work for your TouchDesigner projects.
That’s why I created my latest training, “Join the Broader Conversation: How to Use External Data and APIs in Your TouchDesigner Installations”. Made for the complete Python beginner, the training provides you with everything you need to begin integrating external data sources with your TouchDesigner projects.
When you’re done you’ll be able to charge more and secure bigger projects than you would previously.
In this 1.5 hour video training (which includes example project files), we will:
- Setup your Python programming environment within TouchDesigner.
- Look at two sample projects, one using the GitHub API and one using the Twitter API.
- Walk through how to register, get credentials, and read API documentation. This can be a daunting process and typically deters newcomers.
- Get answers to common problems, such as how to work with Big Data without experiencing performance issues.
- Receive 2 project file templates that you can use in your projects however you like.
Without any guidance, I’ve found that learning to integrate external data natively into TouchDesigner takes new designers between 20-40 hours – and that’s not including the trial and error phase that comes with implementing these concepts for the first time. Many people quit out of frustration.
Creating Flawless TouchDesigner Installations
Want to avoid spending $50,000+ on the wrong computer hardware?
Or having to look your client in the eye and say “I don’t know” when they ask why their shiny new immersive media installation looks like a stuttering, jaggy hot mess?
Then you need this training.
When I first started working with TouchDesigner in 2011, I thought the most valuable skill I had to offer was my ability to code beautiful interactive and immersive media projects for my clients.
While this IS important, I quickly realized that that what my clients valued most was my ability to create an installation that performed perfectly – no tearing, stuttering, judder, or any other issues. If you think this sounds easy, you haven’t been working with Touch long enough.
This is one of the reasons my clients pay me $1,500 per day.
When I first started, I encountered all the issues mentioned above. I overcame them with a combination of all-nighters, hiring the right (and expensive) experts, and in some cases, luck. I also wasted a lot of time and money.
With experience, I was able to preemptively solve for all these performance issues.
That’s why I created the “Creating Flawless Installations with TouchDesigner” training. Now you can benefit from my 7+ years of experience without having to make the costly mistakes I did.
After this training, you will have the confidence you need to deploy immersive design and interactive technology installations for big brands who pay top dollar for your skills. And you’ll be one of the select few individuals in this industry that know how to do what I do with TouchDesigner.
In this 1.5 hour video training (which includes example project files), we will cover:
- The undocumented nVidia Quadro driver tuning settings. I learned these directly from the source: NVidia and Derivative. These settings have helped me avoid disaster many, many times.
- How to ensure you purchase the right hardware for an installation. Mistakes here can cost anywhere from $2k-$50k+, not to mention the damage to your reputation.
- How to setup your TouchDesigner projects for perfect playback BEFORE problems arise. We want to eliminate tearing, stuttering or judder – the main causes of a failed installation – before they occur.
- A deeper understanding of VSYNC, hertz, FPS so that you understand how to identify and troubleshoot the causes of tearing, stuttering, and judder, should they happen to your installation.
- How to configure windows 7 and 10 for optimal performance, so that your project runs at a high, stable frame rate.
Turn on God Mode in TouchDesigner with GLSL Shaders
Want to create large-scale video arrays and real-time LED facades that span high rises?
How about installations that use GPU particle systems, volumetric lighting, and multi-composite operators?
As lots of you know, this is all possible with TouchDesigner – sort of.
Out-of-the-box TouchDesigner is great when you’re just starting out. But as your interactive installations grow larger and your clients begin to want more generative and technical content, there are several challenges that arise and the cracks begin to show.
Problems typically fall into two broad categories:
- Workflows that should be simple become bloated and tedious. Anyone who has tried to composite a large number of icons on screen when working on info displays has experienced this first-hand..
- Performance issues such as low framerate become unmanageable, requiring time-consuming workarounds. In some cases, these kinds of technical issues become unresolvable.
When problems due to scale such as these inevitably occur, the standard TouchDesigner functionality and nodes only gets you so far. And it doesn’t take very long before you have to explain to your client that you’re unable to deliver what they’re asking for.
Lucky for us, we can leverage the code that powers a lot of TouchDesigner to create installations of virtually unlimited scale and technical possibility.
We do this by learning how to program GLSL Shaders. GLSL is the programming language on which many of the features of TouchDesigner are created even now.
When you understand how to apply GLSL to TouchDesigner, you’re effectively turning on “God Mode.”
That’s why I created my training, “Turn on God Mode in TouchDesigner with GLSL Shaders.” In it, I cover the following concepts:
- How to create operators in TouchDesigner using GLSL. Once you learn how to do this, you can customize TouchDesigner however you like. This is the knowledge required to overcome the problems faced when trying to scale your projects
- Never programmed C – let alone GLSL Shaders – a day in your life? No worries. I start right from the beginning and assume zero knowledge of either language. We’ll cover common terms, best-practices, and basic setup before diving into practical examples in 2D.
- I walk you through everything necessary to begin importing GPU code from Shadertoy.com. This gives you access to thousands of shaders that you can use for inspiration or in your installations.
- I provide you with 9 of example project file templates. The techniques in these templates have made me thousands of dollars and are the result of years of trial and error.
TouchDesigner Optimization
General summary
TouchDesigner is the leading platform for interactive media and immersive design, and is used to create the world’s largest installations. Elburz Sorkhabi explores and explains concepts in TouchDesigner revolving around network optimization and performance bottlenecks.
What’s included?
- 2.5 hours of HD video
- TouchDesigner 099 project files and examples
Workshop objectives
- Learn about TouchDesigner’s pull-based cooking
- Learn how to use Performance monitor
- Learn how to use Probe
- Diagnose CPU bottlenecks
- Diagnose GPU bottlenecks
- Diagnose hard drive bottlenecks
Pre-requisites
- Intermediate knowledge of TouchDesigner
- Basic of Python scripting in TouchDesigner
How to Create the Perfect TouchDesigner User Interface
The user interface (UI) is an integral part of any TouchDesigner installation.
Most clients want dynamic installations that they can control as needed, without consulting a designer or programmer for every change. This is usually through a control panel and UI they can access.
Even more important are user-facing UIs – think interactive panels, turntable additions for live shows, and customizable remote controls. This is what many clients have in mind when they decide to contract someone to design an interactive installation.
But if UIs are so central to TouchDesigner installations, why is it so hard to make them not suck? Most UIs slow down installations and break when you try and resize a component or add multiple pages. They’re also ugly.
So as always, I’m fixing the problem by providing a training.
In my latest 2-hour training, you will learn how to:
- Optimize UI elements for performance and speed: Poor UIs take a lot of computing power, slowing down your projects and messing up your rendering. This is bad. I teach you how to avoid it by optimizing your interfaces correctly.
- Skin your UI so that it looks great: When creating a UI, you need to know which objects and operators within them are performing which functions. If you don’t, you’re essentially working within a black box. I show you how to get out of the box so you can customize your UI however you like, with ease.
- Control your UI over a network: As many know, it’s common practice in TouchDesigner installations to have a single computer performing most of the processing-intensive tasks. Most designers host their UI on this main computer, which can tax it further and result in rendering issues. I show you how to get your UI off this computer and onto another one, so that it doesn’t take up the computing power of your main rig.
- Override UI controls: This is how you use your UI with external controllers. While not initially intuitive, once you know how to do it the process is relatively straightforward. As discussed above, external controllers are often a critical component in interactive installations.
A great TouchDesigner installation needs a great user interface. Get the training you need to provide professional UI for top clients today.
Python Intermediate in TouchDesigner
Summary
Elburz deep dives on all the the inner workings of Python in TouchDesigner. This introductory course takes you from the very beginning of your Python journey and explains concepts that will create a powerful foundation for all your Python scripting in TouchDesigner.
What’s included?
- 2.5 hours of HD video
- TouchDesigner 099 project files and examples
Workshop objectives
- How to use Replicator COMP callbacks
- Advanced control flow in Python
- Intermediate Python tricks in TouchDesigner
- How to run scripts and delay script execution
- Useful built-in Python libraries
- Adding 3rd party Python libraries
Pre-requisites
- Basic understand of Python in TouchDesigner
- Highly recommended to have completed Python Introduction in TouchDesigner training
Python Introduction in TouchDesigner
Summary
Elburz deep dives on all the the inner workings of Python in TouchDesigner. This introductory course takes you from the very beginning of your Python journey and explains concepts that will create a powerful foundation for all your Python scripting in TouchDesigner.
What’s included?
- 2 hours and 50 minutes of HD video
- TouchDesigner 099 project files and examples
Workshop objectives
- Learn the basis of Python (data types, variables, etc)
- What is Object oriented programming?
- How to reference and control operators with Python
- How to make Python expressions
- Introduction to Python control flow
- Common Python errors
- Creating Python triggers
Pre-requisites
- None!
Pro TouchDesigner Tricks & Tips
Summary
Ever wonder how TouchDesigner pros work so fast? Ever see a friend or colleague do something and think “How did you do that??” Elburz puts together the top tips and tricks that everyone needs to know when working with TouchDesigner. Speed up your workflows and explore undocumented features across both the application and each operator family.
What’s included?
- 1 hour and 45 minutes of HD video
Workshop objectives
- Learn tricks that improve your workflow
- Learn TouchDesigner functionality you wish you knew
- Learn shortcuts to the most common functionality
- Includes TOP tricks, CHOP tricks, SOP tricks, and COMP tricks
Pre-requisites
- None!
How to Create Multi-Touch 3D Installations Using Render Picking
Want to level up your TouchDesigner skills and create dynamic 3D installations with interactive elements that can scale from single to multi-touch and virtual reality – all without changing anything about your setup?
Are you still trying to use 2D interactive hotspots and invisible UIs in your 3D TouchDesigner installations?
If this sounds like you, I’ve got good news and bad news.
The good news is that you’re not alone – this is how most designers start out (even some experts get away with it). It actually works okay if your 3D installations are static and the interactions are simple.
The bad news is you’re going to miss out on rich, dynamic and complex 3D projects. Anyone who has tried to create dynamic interactive 3D elements using invisible 2D UI hotspots to trigger interactivity has seen this firsthand.
Fortunately, TouchDesigner lets us use render picking to integrate 3D interactivity directly into our projects:
- We can create complex 3D scenes that can be transformed dynamically without sacrificing or continuously re-calibrating interactivity.
- We can also scale our 3D installations for unlimited multi-touch points without ANY adjustments to code.
- TouchDesigner enables us to build virtual reality experiences and render picking allows you to create 3D UI’s and interactions in VR.
But render picking isn’t easy. It requires unintuitive Python scripting techniques. And to implement effectively, render picking assumes a deep understanding of TouchDesigner and the connection between instancing and multichannel manipulation of data.
It’s with this in mind that I created the “How to Create Multi-Touch 3D Installations Using Render Picking” training. In this training, I teach how you how to use Python to build native 3D interactivity directly into your 3D TouchDesigner installations.
In this training, you will learn:
- How to create interactivity for multi-touch systems. Using Python, we can setup a scene that enables unlimited interactivity – as many touch points as we want. This training assumes familiarity with Python, and is therefore intended for intermediate to advanced TouchDesigner users.
- The practical difference between 2D interactivity with 3D interactivity, so that you understand the difference between the limitations of 2D interactive hotspots – and the limitlessness of 3D.
- How to save time by eliminating the need to build 2D invisible UI’s and hotspots into your 3D projects.
- Intermediate Python techniques required for render picking. These include iteration (for loops), basic understanding of classes, and scripting in TouchDesigner.
- How to optimize render picking setups.
The best is that I’m offering “How to Create Multi-Touch 3D Installations Using Render Picking” for $125.
Note: this training is the same content as the previous “3D Interactivity with Render Picking” training, but it has been upgraded and re-recorded. If you already bought that one, you already have access to this new one!.
Beginner Crash Course
Summary
Learning TouchDesigner can be difficult for anyone, no matter what background you have. With all the new terminology, hundreds of operators, and unique paradigm, new users can become overwhelmed and paralyzed. In this training, I take you on a 3 hour deep dive of TouchDesigner’s basic features, fundamentals, and walk you through small example projects to introduce you to the operator families. This course sets you up to take on any of the intermediate trainings available.
What’s included?
- 3 hours of HD video
- Project files
Workshop objectives
- Learn about the basics of TouchDesigner application
- Learn mouse and keyboard shortcuts used by pros
- Learn about all the operator families
- Create small projects with Elburz to get familiar with basic TouchDesigner workflows
Pre-requisites
- None!
Ultimate Resource Guide for TouchDesigner
Summary
Everyone always complains about the wiki. It’s hard to use, that’s a fact. What about all those hidden tutorials? And how about gigs? Where are those? Blogs and videos, where can I find those? For the first time ever, this training compiles all the TouchDesigner resources available and guides you not just in finding them, but also how to find future resources.
What’s included?
- 1 hour of HD video
Workshop objectives
- Learn how to take full advantage of the wiki to find anything you need
- Learn about OP Snippets, Palette, and Installation folder templates
- Where to find the best and most useful tools and templates
- Where to get more learning resources, how to join the community, and where to find work
Pre-requisites
- None!
Physics Fundamentals: Use Physics Like A Pro in TouchDesigner
Want to create TouchDesigner installations with objects that interact with each other, human participants, and the environment? How about 3D scenes with objects that respond to natural forces?
Whether you’re interested in the above or are just tired of your TouchDesigner projects looking like a video game from the early 90s, the answer is Physics.
Physics is the key to unlocking a new level of realism and natural interactions in your TouchDesigner installations. Put plainly, it brings a new level of immersive fidelity and consistency to interactive installations.
But getting physics right in TouchDesigner is an uphill battle:
- First, you need to understand basic physics theory and terminology. If you don’t come from a physics or mathematics background, you’re likely unfamiliar with terms like “kinematic states,” “bounding ellipsoid,” or “coefficient of restitution.” Not only is it essential to understand these as concepts for the purposes of creating awesome interactive installations – they’re the names of the buttons and parameters in the TouchDesigner interface! So yeah, you need to know these.
- Then, you need to understand the physics workflow in TouchDesigner. This is completely different from how you’ve previously controlled 3D objects from within TouchDesigner.
You can spend days, weeks, or even months trying to learn this stuff. Or, you can gain an understanding of the fundamentals in just over 2 hours with my latest training, “Physics Fundamentals: Use Physics Like A Pro in TouchDesigner.”
In “Physics Fundamentals” I give you everything you need to start leveraging physics to create interactive and immersive TouchDesigner projects of the highest caliber.
In “Physics Fundamentals,” you get:
- An introduction to the language of physics: From collision shapes to kinematics states, you’ll learn the words, definitions, and mathematics to leverage physics in your TouchDesigner work.
- A real-time demonstration of physics functions in TouchDesigner: I show you where physics-related capabilities are in the TouchDesigner platform, what they do, and how they work. Beginners to physics are welcome, as I assume you have no prior knowledge of the subject. That said, this course does assume basic TouchDesigner and Python knowledge.
- Examples of simulations and TouchDesigner physics workflows: I walk you through several simulations using the main physics components, beginning with with Bullet Solver COMP – the component of the workload that solves all physics simulation data and interacts with actors and forces – and Actor COMP, which deals specifically with how actors and objects interact in a simulation. As the examples I provide build in complexity, you’ll learn how to operate the simulation and structure your workflow in such a way that you can get started with physics in TouchDesigner immediately.
- Intermediate Physics techniques and Instancing geometry in the simulation: This is my favorite part. You’ll learn how to simulate natural forces like wind and gravity. I’ll also demonstrate how – using constraints – you can make objects interact with each other to form a realistic simulation. We’ll create elaborate physics simulations by learning to respond to physics collision with Python code. Finally, I’ll show you how you can feed external data from sensors and other inputs into the physics simulation to control elements in real-time.
When you’ve finished “Physics Fundamentals,” you’ll be able to add physics – one of the most in-demand TouchDesigner skills – to your interactive and immersive media repertoire.
Understanding and Negotiating Contracts for TouchDesigner Pros
Summary
How many times have you been on a gig and been screwed over because you didn’t have a contract in place? How often have you wished you could properly negotiate or knew the finer points of what you were actually signing? In this workshop, you’ll learn about the most common types of contracts, what all the sections mean, and how you can change them based on your requirements. The included templates give you a great reference whether you’re just getting your career started or if you’re a seasoned pro and want to review your own contracts.
What’s included?
- 2 hours of HD video
- Templates for NDA, SLA, General Service Agreement, and Independent Contractor Agreement
Workshop objectives
- Explore the whole contract pipeline to know when you’ll need what kind of contracts
- Review a Non-disclosure Agreement and learn how to keep your company secrets safe
- Analyze a Work Agreement (MSA/SoW) and what you can negotiate on with your clients
- Examine a Service Level Agreement (SLA) and how you can get paid to maintain your installations
- Understand the process of redlining contracts
Pre-requisites
- None!
Kinect 2 Fundamentals
Summary
Everyone has had a client ask them to make something cool with a Kinect 2. Where do you being? What can you make? Will it be hard or easy? How do we combine the Kinect info with regular TouchDesigner work that we have to do. In this workshop, I introduce you to the fundamentals of using the Kinect 2. This includes initial setup, using the invaluable Kinect Studio 2.0, demonstrating the common uses of Kinect 2 in TouchDesigner, and then talking through many of the common hardware pitfalls when using a Kinect 2 for a project.
What’s included?
- 2 hours of HD video
- Project files
Workshop objectives
- Learn to work with Kinect Studio 2
- Work with common Kinect operators
- Start drawing in 2D with skeleton data
- Scale up with instancing on Kinect skeleton data
- Create real-time SOP geometry with Kinect data
- Build real-time 3D point clouds based on Kienct depth textures
- Combine Kinect player index data with nVidia Flow for real-time person tracking effects
- Figure out common hardware difficulties and FAQ about Kinects
Pre-requisites
- Beginner TouchDesigner skills
- Microsoft Kinect 2 for Windows sensor
God Mode in 3D: GLSL For 3D TouchDesigner Installations
Have you ever used high-density geometry and models in TouchDesigner to create the visually jaw-dropping interactive installations of your dreams, but come up short? You’re not alone. Creating fully functional 3D installations that look amazing and let users interact with them in real time is a major sticking point along most folk’s TouchDesigner journey.
In fact, I’d say that it’s nearly impossible to get right without knowledge of one tool: GLSL.
When you understand how to apply GLSL, you can create 3D installations on a massive scale, work with high density point clouds using sensors, and manipulate complex geometry in real time for truly interactive, large-scale immersive projects.
Over the course of 1.5 hours, this is exactly what you’ll learn in “God Mode in 3D: GLSL For 3D TouchDesigner Installations”. Through real-world examples and instruction, I give you the tools you need to begin working with GLSL in 3D today.
Note: We touched on the basics of GLSL with a focus on 2D work in a previous training, “Turn On God Mode in TouchDesigner With GLSL Shaders”. If you’re new to GLSL, I highly recommend you click here to get that course, and view it before viewing “God Mode in 3D”.
Here’s exactly what you’ll learn in “God Mode in 3D”:
- How to program on the GPU and replace your SOP networks. Because TouchDesigner’s built-in SOPs are based on the CPU, they’re quick to slow down, especially when processing complex 3D models. To solve for this, I show you how to create your code to manipulate 3D objects that run on the GPU. This enables you to open up your workflow and create higher performing installations using more data and 3D models.
- How to displace points using 2D textures: The ability to use 2D data to influence 3D data is one of the most in-demand TouchDesigner skills. There are innumerable examples of where you can apply this, but the most illustrative is probably the Rutt Etra effect.
- Use Microsoft Kinect to manipulate points and data in real time: With this, you can take 3D scans of users that can then be leveraged to influence installations. I show you not only how to gather this data, but how to get it into your shader pipeline as well.
- Pass data between vertex and pixel shaders: This is the key to combining your 2D work with the 3D. When you learn to integrate vertex and pixel shader data, you can manipulate objects in a way that was previously impossible.
- Use texture geometry in a vertex shader: I show you how to send images and movies to your vertex code so you can combine it with 3D geometry This skill is fundamental to the workflow of any professional TouchDesigner developer. When on a gig, it’s standard practice to be handed a model and texture if you can’t bring the texture back on the model, you likely won’t get the gig.
For many, leveraging GLSL in TouchDesigner is the most critical step towards becoming a professional TouchDesigner developer. It’s one of those skills that separates the amateurs from the pros.
Fortunately, it’s a skill that can be acquired relatively easy with practice and the guidance provided in “God Mode in 3D”.
SOPs Demystified
Summary
SOPs are tough, there’s no getting around that, but they aren’t impossible. What most people lack is a fundamental understanding of how SOPs work and the data structure that drives them. With this knowledge in hand, it’s possible to do great things with SOPs. In this training, Elburz takes you from SOP ground-zero through to making some SOP data visualizations and particle systems with attractors and metaball forces.
What’s included?
- Over 2 hours of HD video
- Project files
Workshop objectives
- Learn the underlying dat structure of SOPs
- Explore pro tricks for using SOP Viewers and Geometry Panels
- Introduction to basic SOP generators
- Learn how to render SOPs
- Overview of common materials
- Build a dynamic 2D data vizualiazation with SOPs
- Learn the basics of Particle SOP
- Explore surface attractor tips for particle systems
- Use metaballs and forces to control particle systems
Pre-requisites
- Beginner TouchDesigner skills
Pitching and Pricing for TouchDesigner Pros
Summary
Getting gigs can be hard. Even something as simple as figuring out the budget can be a challenge. Whether your new to the industry or a seasoned pro, there are many factors to consider in pricing. To add even more on your plate, once you have a price, you still have to put together a nice presentation to pitch the project. In this workshop, I take you through the common process of pricing and pitching a gig to win it as quickly as possible.
What’s included?
- 2 hours of HD video
- Template files for all documents created in training, including feature list, quote spreadsheet, and pitch deck
Workshop objectives
- Learn about buy-in and it’s importance in the pitching process
- Develop thought-process for building project feature lists
- Learn how to layout your quote spreadsheet
- Discover different methods of pricing hardware and asking suppliers for quotes
- Build strategies for developing efficient and beautiful pitch decks
- Deliver final pitches and deal with any final hurdles in pitching
Pre-requisites
- None!
Machine Learning for TouchDesigner
Machine Learning (ML) completely transforms the capabilities of TouchDesigner.
In fact, it might be the single most important development for interactive tech and immersive media in years.
Why?
Well, most TouchDesigner developers are used to standard computer vision, which requires you to program very specific rules for every bit of data your installation ingests. If the data varies even slightly, the rules must be reprogrammed, or the installation can break.
With ML, a new relationship between data inputs and their outcomes is created. Instead of programming a set of specific rules, large datasets are fed to your computer that “train” it to understand it’s environment.
For example, without ML it’s almost impossible to get your TouchDesigner installation to recognize faces of people with hats, glasses, or beards, because there are just too many variations to create rules for. But with ML, you can train your installation to recognize what a face is by having it learn from millions of images of people.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg. From realistic landscapes generated using millions of data points, to style transfers that look just like a Monet, to near-limitless skeleton tracking, ML blows open what is possible with TouchDesigner.
But like most things interactive and immersive, it’s not that easy…
- Machine learning is complex. Without a basic understanding of how and why ML works, you’ll always be confused as to why it’s doing what it’s doing. This is doubly true for artists without a technical background, as the subject of ML can easily be the focus of an entire university degree.
- Even once you understand it, creating a functional ML setup can be a pain. Until recently, you needed a specific OS, libraries, programming languages, drivers and frameworks, and graphics cards to make ML work with TouchDesigner.
To solve these problems, I created the training “Machine Learning For TouchDesigner.” In it, I demonstrate how to leverage ML to the fullest using TouchDesigner and a program called Runway ML.
For those unfamiliar, Runway ML is an application that allows you run ML models both locally and even on their own Remote GPU cloud resources that eliminates the need for you to have custom software or hardware to leverage machine learning.
I love Runway ML so much that I’ve been collaborating with the co-founders on educational materials, and they were generous enough to offer anyone who purchases this course a $20 coupon code for remote GPU processing, which equates to over 6.5 hours of processing time.
Here’s exactly what you get in “Machine Learning For TouchDesigner”:
- Learn the fundamentals of Machine Learning, and why it’s different from the computer vision that you’re used to: Understanding how ML works in comparison to old school computer vision is the critical first step in transforming how you view what’s possible for your installations. That’s why I teach this first.
- How to setup Runway ML and their machine learning models: We dive straight into applying ML. You’ll learn how to setup camera inputs, style transfers, object detection, and realistic landscape generation within Runway ML. Runway ML is probably the most flexible machine learning-enabled tool that integrates with TouchDesigner – as well as the easiest to use once it’s set up. But getting them working together can be challenging. Rather than spend hours – or days – getting TouchDesigner and Runway to talk to each other, I teach you how to do it with a few clicks. We’ll also cover Socket.io, the web communication protocol that lets TouchDesigner and Runway talk to each other. I lay out the visual workflow of ML with TouchDesigner. Finally, I demonstrate how to use the MobileNet algorithm to perform object detection in an image.
- Perform near-infinite skeleton tracking using just a webcam: Exactly what it sounds like, you’ll learn how to use Runway ML’s PoseNet algorithm to track multiple skeletons in a single frame, using nothing but a one webcam.
- Create style transfers: Have you seen those images of modern pictures that have been rendered in the style of Van Gogh or Monet? You’re going to learn to create just that, and more. You’ll be able to teach Runway ML to take images from your camera feed and render them in the style of great artists.
- How to export texture data from TouchDesigner to Runway ML: Most apps can’t manage hardware devices as well as TouchDesigner, and in a real world install you’ll be juggling lots of media and hardware that you’ll want processed with machine learning models. That’s why in this section I teach you how to send any of that texture data to Runway ML from TouchDesigner, so TouchDesigner can act as the mother brain of your installations in the same manner in which you’re used to.
- Create insanity by feeding Runway ML models into each other: This part is a lot of fun. I show you how to feed Runway ML algorithmic models into each other to create some truly beautiful (and bizarre) effects. This is where the limitless power of ML starts to become truly apparent.
By the end of “Machine Learning For TouchDesigner”, you’ll have everything you need to leverage machine learning in your TouchDesigner installations immediately.
Prerequisites: To get the most out of this course, you should already have a good fundamental understanding of TouchDesigner, as well as Python and how it is used inside of TouchDesigner. We recommend our TouchDesigner 101 and Python 101 for TouchDesigner courses.