3D Texture Tricks in TouchDesigner - TouchDesigner Tutorial 031

[@bradonwebb2539]

wooooow @elburz - noise chop - into speed chop, with limit - that was a thing of beauty. very simple setup that demonstrates the complexity you can generate with only a few nodes. Even though TD hasn't changed too much over the years I'm always surprised to find these little nuggets of gold. its not only about understanding math, its about understanding the TD mindset. Thanks!

[@TheInteractiveImmersiveHQ]

Hahah so true. I'm even learning new tricks all the time. I totally agree that one of the best things folks can do when they're getting into TouchDesigner is to try to think like a TouchDesigner developer, similarly to how when you learn a new language some folks say "don't just translate a language you know in your head into the new language" because it'll give you all kinds of crazy grammar errors and you'll always be fumbling around for words.

[@cartoonfive]

Very useful. This seems to be one of the few methods for instances with time offsets in Touch. I guess I figured even out how to keep the speed constant, but have a random offset per instance.

[@TheInteractiveImmersiveHQ]

Glad it was helpful! Thanks for watching :)

[@lupo8282]

Very nice. The efficiency of this amazes me.

[@lupo8282]

Also: Great tutorials, man. You are on point.

[@TheInteractiveImmersiveHQ]

Thanks! Our pleasure to make content you're enjoying. The efficiency of GPUs really is incredible! Simple tricks go a long way with it :)

[@HotelEdenMusic]

Always incredible tutorials, thank you for giving so much back to the TD community!

[@TheInteractiveImmersiveHQ]

We appreciate the feedback - our pleasure! Thanks for watching :)

[@soupco]

This is fab, thank you! Would you have any suggestions at all for how you would have a series of consistent, linear delayed start points as opposed to the noise generating random start points please? For example, Frame 1 begins first, followed by frame 2 and so on, creating a ripple effect? Thanks for sharing this, it was really eye opening 🙏

[@TheInteractiveImmersiveHQ]

You could probably use something like the Beat CHOP into a Shuffle CHOP to get that kind of effect. The Beat CHOP would allow you to create a large number of looping values that are slightly offset from one another, and the Shuffle CHOP would let you then take the separate channels of the Beat CHOP and shuffle them into a single CHOP channel for use with the instancing setup. Hope that helps!

[@soupco]

@@TheInteractiveImmersiveHQ Thanks so much! There's my weekend homework :)

[@NationalTrevor]

Awesome video - thank you.

[@TheInteractiveImmersiveHQ]

No problem! Glad you enjoyed it!

[@mxjsptlk]

Nice! If you create your instances Using an RG UV map you keep it all on the gpu

[@TheInteractiveImmersiveHQ]

That's a great idea! When you want to push for even more optimization you can do things like even keep your layouts in textures!

[@Stray_side]

Great Vid super awesome! I wanted to know if there was a way to patch in audio that can by synced in accordance.

[@TheInteractiveImmersiveHQ]

Certainly. It depends on how you'd like to integrate the audio. Can you tell me a bit more about what you'd like to do?

[@nonself.mp4]

What if you want to make the offset such that it makes an image, or you want a bunch of images to go into the texture3d so it maies a video out of images?

[@TheInteractiveImmersiveHQ]

It's definitely possible to store a number of separate static images into the Tex3D TOP! An easy way to do this is to connect all of the final textures to a _Switch TOP_ , and then use the expression _me.time.frame - 1_ for the *Index* parameter. Then, set the *Cache Size* parameter in the _Texture 3D TOP_ to the total number of images you want to store and turn on the *Pre Fill* parameter. Hope that helps!

[@MrPiroman1990]

Alternative video title: "A MAN TRIES NOT TO SAY 69 (Nice) WHILE KEEPING A STRAIGHT FACE" Great job. Not a begginer yet still learning from you!

[@TheInteractiveImmersiveHQ]

Thanks for watching and glad you're enjoying and learning new tricks :)

[@abhimanyukrishna5792]

Thanks a lot for this tutorial! I did something similar manually on AfterEffects, but this technique saves so much time! Is there any way to instance the audio input of the movie file in a similar manner as well? Wherein the sound has also been offset by a certain parameter?

[@TheInteractiveImmersiveHQ]

No problem! You could probably do something similar but a bit more tedious with replicating Lookup CHOPs and using those to scan through the audio using Timer CHOP set to Parallel mode and driven by a table, but it would definitely be more tedious than this. If you hop on our blog and search "Lookup" you'll find some good blog posts about Lookup CHOP that can help get you started with it if you haven't used it before.

[@mateafriend1007]

Thanks so much for this! I have a question I combined the above techniques, using the constant to control speed and pattern to create random variation. But when I slow down the constant to a very small number the images cross fade and create unwanted effects. Is there somewhere this can be controlled?

[@TheInteractiveImmersiveHQ]

Great question, yes you can actually change this behaviour! Head to the Constant MAT and open up its parameters. To the right of the Color Map parameter you'll see a set of double arrows pointing to the right. Click on this icon to open additional settings for the color map texture. If you change the Filter parameter to "Nearest", the smooth interpolation you're seeing between frames will be removed. Hope that helps!

[@mateafriend1007]

@@TheInteractiveImmersiveHQ Thank you so much for the reply ! alwyas helpful, I am looking for a way to control the blend rather than take it away... I found another tutorial that showed a method using the limit and quantizing the values of W but it only does what the "Nearest" filter does and removes the interpolaton.

[@akenbak]

Hi Elburbz nice video, this is helping me right now, and i want to thank you!. I have one question: Is there a way to replicate the speed part but using tops instead of CHOPs? Im trying to do this for a bigger particle system... about 5000 particles so I dont know if doing this speed trick would affect the CPU performance

[@akenbak]

I have an approach using feedback but fo this project is preferable not to use feedback TOP

[@TheInteractiveImmersiveHQ]

@@akenbak you can certainly keep everything in TOPs if you'd like to optimize it for scaling. I think you would still want to use a Feedback TOP because then you can continuously add or subtract values inside of a feedback loop and that will effectively become the TOP version of a Speed CHOP.

[@KarynEaston]

This is fantastic! thanks but how can I render it out so it plays as a movie? 🙂

[@TheInteractiveImmersiveHQ]

Great question! You’ll want to use a Movie File Out TOP to render your visuals to a video file. We actually have a blog post (linked below) that dives into the Movie File Out TOP and its settings. Export Videos from TouchDesigner Like a Pro: interactiveimmersive.io/blog/beginner/output-movies-from-touchdesigner-like-a-pro/

[@KarynEaston]

@@TheInteractiveImmersiveHQ Thank you so much! I'll give it a try 🙂

[@KarynEaston]

Just one last query. I tried to add a different movie consisting of a 100 frames I even called it 'count' as in the tutorial but unfortunately nothing happened and the original file just continued to play. IS there something I need to do - thanks for any help? :-)

[@hinduspl]

is therere an way to get non rectangle aspect ratio 1:1 on that texture3d top ?

[@TheInteractiveImmersiveHQ]

Whatever texture you feed into the Texture3D TOP will define the resolution of the "frames", it just appears to be cropped to a square within the viewer. Hope that helps!