An often overlooked feature of TouchDesigner is that it can actually host a web server! This feature has flown under the radar for a lot of developers and artists but it gives you an easy way to receive messages from all kinds of other systems. In this post, we’ll show you how to send messages…
The new experimental release of TouchDesigner now includes DAT syntax highlighting for the TouchDesigner languages python, GLSL, JSON, XML, all inside the DAT Viewer. In addition, there are also options for custom zooming. Now within the DAT viewer, it will be easier to debug and sort your code without using a third-party code editor. How…
We’ve all been there. Deep in a few scripts and barely hanging on to what we understand about Python as we try to wrangle a strange set of features together. And then BAM. Errors. Sometimes these errors are easy to deal with, but often times they are elusive and tricky to debug without a few…
There are many times where we have to deal with large amounts of data in TouchDesigner. Whether you’re working with social media or large data sets provided by clients, you’ve likely experienced how tricky it can be to manage this data in DATs. In this blog post, I’ll show you how you can take advantage…
We’ve all used python global variables in our projects for years. This could take form of asset paths, computer names, parameters, or really anything! Maybe you’ve got an XML file of settings, a CSV, or even an internal Table DAT. Whatever it is you’ve likely experienced that moment when you update the variable and found…
TouchDesigner is always growing in its Python capabilities. Whether it’s the newer and shinier, like OpenCV and Script TOP, or more under the hood features like optimized expressions. One TouchDesigner Python feature that has been missed by many TouchDesigner developers is the tdu module. Let’s take a look! What is the TouchDesigner TDU Python module? The…
We all love using Python in TouchDesigner. It gives you so much flexibility and power to create whatever you want. But I’m sure you’ve heard all the pros say “be careful! Python can get real slow!” While this is true, it doesn’t mean that there aren’t easy ways to optimize your Python usage so you…
There are many different ways to externalize settings for an installation. You could use CSV, Excel files, text files, and more. These are all simple and easy to use, but what happens if you want to store data that’s a bit more complex? We usually end up turning to either JSON, XML, or YAML. Personally…
Getting comfortable with Python in TouchDesigner can feel like and stop-and-go process. You go through some tutorials, feel great, then you’re encountered with a project and end up overwhelmed. The problem here is that it’s hard to simulate the complexity of a project’s state machine at home, and it’s incredibly boring. One of the things…
Twitch is blowing up as a platform and more and more clients are wanting to shift their projects into some form of interactive live stream. If you’ve read our past posts, we’ve talked about how to get Twitch chat into TouchDesigner using WebSockets, but if you’re just getting started on your TouchDesigner Python journey, then…