factorysettings

Enhanced particle system for Touchdesigner

Dear friends, compared to the last post regarding this movement-reacting-particle-system, I've made some adjustments to make it look even more organic.

I've added a texture to the geometry, just have a look at textures.com , a lot of nice textures provided for free. Cleaned up the shader slightly and added another pass for the rotation. I think I can pack the shader more optimized, but how it's currently set up, I think it's easier to understand.

The fade out of the particles and ...

Particle Dancer: Particle spawning system in Touchdesigner

Dearest Friends, I've been playing with this for a while now. The goal was to make a lightweight patch, easy to follow, runs on older systems and with not too many overwhelming tweaking options. I must say that getting the footage from this particular dancer really helped polishing the patch a bit more. Thanks to Dayne Florence a lot!

This patch started at a point where I couldn't cope with these utterly complex patches anymore. For instance the particleGPU on the palette, with al due r...

TD Scripts update v1.3: performance boost and .TOX!

Dear Blender/TD enthusiast, while philosophizing about the most optimal way of transferring from Blender to TD (soon from TD to Blender as well.....), I encountered some bottlenecks I had to tackle.

First and most important, exporting large Objects to SOP. This could take quite a while for larger meshes. I managed to do quite some optimization in the execution code that would give a massive performance boost! I honestly see no future between me and .fbx now with the lightning speed of t...

Re-link texture files with the REFERATOR .TOX beta pre-release

Dearest Friends, this is typically one of those TOXes that gets born after a couple of frustrating projects. In an ideal world, you would receive project files with every path relative to the main .toe file, nicely packed in a zip file. Within practice, it goes slightly different. It's a back and forth of .toe files, finalversion.30.final.whatever.toe naming, but that's not even the annoying part. The worst element is that with every .toe file you sometimes have to re-link ALL of the imported...

Pseudo Datamosh in Touchdesigner

Hello dearest supporters! I've been playing with this for a while and finally available for you exclusively! 

It works by loading in a folder with images and/or movieclips. Just play a bit with the speed parameter and displace amount. There is quite some things going on under the hood, but I'll dedicate a different post on a more detailed insight on how this works.

I think I'll record a tutorial on this anyways, but it could take some time. After the succes of the Chladni tut...

Some insights on the Chladni Cymatics in Touchdesigner

Hi friends! I promised to give some insights on how the Patreon version of the Chladni plate is different than the one from the tutorial. I hope you've liked the tutorial, despite it's shorter, it took me more time than usual, so great to see quite some views and comments already!

First of all, fellow TD'er 'Function Store' (https://www.patreon.com/function_store) mentioned the downsides on working with glob...

Chladni cymatics in Touchdesigner

Dear friends, visited the Touchdesigner (mini) summit in Berlin couple weeks ago. It's quite intimidating to see all these geeks in one room, presenting what they are up to! Also, very fun to see some of them in the flesh. 

Currently working on a couple of things. This Chladni pattern patch was something I did on the side and got a little bit out of hand. The technique is actually quite simple so I'm planning to record a short tutorial pretty soon. In the meantime, play with this p...

0.9.4 release: multiple channel support!

Dear Friends, I've noticed that a lot of users needed multiple channel support. Files downloaded via regular channels and/or handed over by third parties usually have more tracks assigned to different channels. The 0.9.3 release would give unexpected results. Also fixed the 'note_on' with velocity '0' issue, it has to be read as a 'note_off', it didn't at first.

Variable tempo seems to work but I earmarked it as 'experimental'. Most of the midifiles have a tempo signature baked in the f...

Workfiles / release notes: MIDI 2 Keyframes

Tutorials:

- Blender: https://youtu.be/pkT5Xk7BDl8

- After Effects: https://youtu.be/5lyM_exMH78

Release notes:

0.9.3:

- supports note-on-off messages only (no CC yet..)

- supports 1 channel and 1 track (of course multiple notes are supported)

- variable speed not supported yet

- both windows and MAC OSX

Workfiles & insights - Gamedev in TD second release

Dear Friends, I've been messing around quite a lot lately with the updated collision system, and even it's not watertight (yet), I think it's ready for a v1.1 update of the first release. 

I went for a more mathematical approach instead of the combination with an extra renderpass for the 'normal to camera'. It all felt a bit to hacky and the collision didn't 'glide' very nicely, it was very bumpy. Also cleaned up the network, made some (non)cooking optimizations, so overall, I'm pr...

Blender tutorial also online! Also macOS beta version!

You might have noticed that the tool also includes a Blender .py script export button. First found it a little redundant to post this new tutorial but I've noticed some confusion about whether this was only an AfterEffects tool, or both, or separate. To make it clear, it's the same tool, it has two export buttons, one for a JSX script that runs in AE, and one button for a .py script that runs in Blender.

Nonetheless, this also a nice opportunity to inform that there is also a beta relea...

Beta release: MIDI to Keyframe generator for After Effects

Dear Friends, We've been quite busy with this one the last couple of weeks. You might recognize it from a web based version we have, but to have it as a standalone executable was something I desperately wanted from the start.

So now it is! The tutorial gives a brief rundown on how this works. It's currently orientated towards AfterEffects but there is also a script generator for Blender; the .py export. If your familiar with running scripts in Blender, go ahead, it works fine! But I'll ...

TD Gamedev progress: collision system

Hi friends, pretty excited about this update! We're currently finishing a descent collision system within our search whether it'll be possible to create an environment for game development inside Touchdesigner. And not to be to poshy about it, it's getting pretty watertight!

This was a headscratcher to be honest. I just went on and off with shall I use the colorbuffers or not. I've posted earlier some insights on the collision system using a depth camera, and a normal to camera pass. It...

TD Scripts update v1.2: export animated camera's!

Dear Friends,

From the beginning I had this option already in the back of my head, exporting animated camera's. I've already mentioned I'm always having a hard time with the .fbx export method, same with animated camera's from Blender into Touchdesigner. The whole Y-up conversion, parenting, counter rotation .fbx import thing that happens in TD, for me personally, it's mind flipping, super annoying If you'd like to edit your camera slightly afterwards.

A recent project involved a ...

Interior Mapping Shader v1.2 update

Dear Friends, you might have seen this video popping up in your feed. I've made a couple of adjustments. 

First of all, your now able to randomize the rooms. In the 'INSTANCE DATA' container a noiseCHOP generates random integers between the amount of cubemaps you're using. There is currently only one available, since I've used the freely available textures from Julius Ihle 'windowbox shader', I encourage you to have a look at his website 2022-11-17 14:44:39 +0000 UTC View Post

Interior Mapping in Touchdesigner

Dear Friends, while we were working on our audio reactive vaporesque racing clip, I've stumbled on this so called 'interior mapping', well, it has different aliases, parallax mapping, depth mapping etc. What intrigued me is how you could turn one polygon in a full sized skyscraper including all these different interiors. Always nice to keep one leg in the gamedevelopment. Not sure if they got track of my interests lately but it sort of kept popping up here and there, clips of flat planes with...

Workfiles - Interior Mapping in Touchdesigner

.toe file with interior mapping shader

TD Scripts v1.2beta - patron pre-release!

Hello supporting friends! Quite busy with a lot of things in the background. We're working on a HUGE audio-reactive environment with a lot of assets inside you can cherry pick. 

While working on a more 3D model orientated project, you're switching a lot between programs for modeling, texturing etc. The convenient thing is that we could check if our TD Scripts for Blender add-on was up for the task...

And it was! We've used it constantly. Of course you'll bump into bugs, but t...

New 3d model!

Dear friends, you might have noticed that we occasionally throw a 3d model on the Blendermarket. We come from the 'classic-modeling-era' and just like to keep our muscle memory intact. We had quite some unfinished projects on the shelf and are now starting to finishing up a couple of them!

It's a lot of fun if you actually own the physical object, it's just great for reference. Herewith a classic Mackie 1402 channel mixer for you to play with. It pays of quite nicely if you were already...

Workfiles - 3D model: Mackie 1402 VLZ Pro

blendfile including textures and model for Mackie channel mixer

TD Scripts update v1.1: get into SOP space!

Personally, I sometimes find it difficult to wrap my head around the export realm within Touchdesigner. The .fbx is quite overwhelming with all these containers, y-up, z-up converted, etc. And I always have to check the UV layout in a different program since, as far as I know, there is no option to have a clear overview how the UV layouts are actually laid out.

These two added scripts to the Blender add-on clears this up! Rebuild the mesh from Blender completely from scratch into Touchd...

Coming soon, TD Scripts v1.1!

I've been working on two more export capabilities of our TD Scripts Blender Add-on. Should be released this week! 

The first update rebuilds the entire mesh in Touchdesigner using a DattoSOP. You basically have direct acces to the geometry by using the docked tableDATs. Other than the SopToDAT, you can alter the data in the tables and the geometry changes with it.

The second update exports a UV Map representation into TD. I always find the whole UV realm in TD a bit of a blac...

Blender Add-on: "Export scripts to Touchdesigner"

Hi! Herewith you'll find the first release of our recently developed Blender Add-on: 'TD Scripts v1.0. We're currently seeking for opportunities to make the transition between Blender and Touchdesigner more fluid, especially within the export realm.

Since I'm mostly working with  Physically based Rendering, a lot of materials usually contain 4 texture files at least. As projects are getting more complex, geometry can quickly contain more than one material. There are several ways fo...

TD Gamedev progress & grass

Hi dearest friends! I'd like to give you an update on the game development progress using Touchdesigner. Also this lovely grassy level for you to go all 'sound of music' on!

Workfiles & insights here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/67891358

Workfiles & insights - Gamedev in TD / Grass!

Dearest supporters! Busy times, currently working on a project with 4x 4k beamers for a museum. I actually modeled the entire room and used this gamedev in touchdesigner technique for testing out the mapping. The fun thing is that you can walk around the room itself! So I must say, for archviz kind of stuff, this .toe is very useful!

Then I'm always intrigued by how games deal with nature stuff, especially grass. It's always balancing between looks and performance. It would just look la...

Video / image x fader .tox update v1.1

Dear friends, I've added the option for stills to be implemented in the mix as well. First it needed videoclips only, since it reacted based on the length of the moviefile. Since a still has only 1 frame, it stopped. Images and clips can now be used intertwined, as long as the're in the same folder.

Set the 'Image duration' for every still/image, the duration is set in frames. So when running at 60 fps, an image duration of 300 will be 5 seconds. Also added a resolution fit, when you're...

First Game dev .toe release!

Dear Friends,

Herewith the first part of this 'game development in Touchdesigner' journey. You can walk around using your mouse and the keys 'ASDW'. All textures and models are packed in the .toe file. This is the basic movement of the character and camera as you would expect within a 3rd person game. But it would also be very suitable for architectural visualization and/or stage design showcases. It's very adaptable!

Dev./bugs:

- no collision detection yet

- when you ...

Workfiles & insights - Gamedev in TD first release

Dear friends, excusez-moi for the delay. The model didn't fit very well with the rig, so I needed to adjust the geometry, so had to redo the UV's and textures as well. But I think it looks a whole lot better than the earlier model.

I threw the collision with 'normal to camera' idea in the bin. I find it not very dynamic for further development. It worked quite well at first sight but it demanded to much power and I would like to keep things as light as possible. So I'm currently working...

Nature timelapse footage & video-xfader tox

Dear friends! Since Resolume isn't able to auto-fade a videoclip seamlessly into the next clip (it actually needs to stop first before the new clip fades in). I've build a simple patch in Touchdesigner. You basically load in a folder with moviefiles, hit reset and it will loop the entire folder, cross-fading seamlessly. This one is available as a free download at our Patreon.

For our Tier supporters we've added a bunch of timelapses on the server. These were shot from our dependance at ...

Gamedev in TD progress...

Dear friends,

Herewith I'll give you an update on the gamedevelopment in Touchdesigner. It's going quite well actually, better than I expected. I manage to create a collision system without the bullet physics. First thought that bullet solver was the go to tool for collision, but the system I got know is way more adaptable to newly implemented geometry.

I'm basically collecting two values:

1. the depth to the character

2. the angle the character is looking at a face (n...