TouchDesigner 099 Visual Development Platform On Windows And MacOS Is Now Official

TouchDesigner 099 on Windows and macOS is now official!  

Already a leader in high-throughput video playback, processing and display, TouchDesigner 099 adds support for the latest SDI video cards from AJA, Bluefish and Blackmagic up to 4K and 12G, with low-latency, high-frame-rate and deep pixel-depth.  This complements TouchDesigner’s support of multi-computer, multi-GPU, multi-outs to Displayport and HDMI.  

The choices for getting video between TouchDesigner and other systems now includes Syphon/Spout along with the streaming over IP of H.264, Newtek NDI and HAP video.  Image destinations are on screens, projections, LEDs in any configuration and lasers aimed at anything. 

TouchDesigner’s most popular component, Kantan Mapper for mapping video onto shapes has been fully re-engineered. In the drive for greater connectivity to the media and data around us, a fully interactive web browser panel based on Chrome/Chromium enables you to embed web interactions in your TouchDesigner projects. 

TouchDesigner Network, Ericeira World Surfing Reserve Interpretation Centre
TouchDesigner Network: Ericeira World Surfing Reserve Interpretation Centre

PBR (physically-based rendering) in TouchDesigner combines more realistic 3D surface materials and environment illumination. TouchDesigner now fully imports Substance Designer materials, outputting multi-layer textures for PBR materials. 

With HTC Vive and its new VR tracking devices, and Oculus with Audio 3D spatialization, we have had a glimpse of the diverse uses of VR and its hardware with TouchDesigner. To that end, Derivative built an efficient pre-made VR Environment for users to adapt and extend.

Below some feature highlights, and for more insight into TouchDesigner 099 see the What's New in 099 page. 
 
Application Building 
 
With its extensive control panel feature-set allowing for the design of custom interfaces and logic, TouchDesigner is used to build full applications or rapidly prototype ideas with complete user interfaces, multitouch interaction and gestures, and custom parameters.  

A full range of interactions are supported such as mouse-based or touch-screen control panels, control of 3D virtual environments, gestural inputs, and multi-person interactions.  

Kinetic Lights control software created with TouchDesigner working in perfect sync with a GrandMA
Kinetic Lights control software created with TouchDesigner working in perfect sync with a GrandMA

High Performance Media Systems

Ultra-resolution video playback maximizing hardware power lets you do more with less and provides complete customizability to design media systems to meet any requirement.  

TouchDesigner utilizes advanced codecs of which HAP Q stands out as the right choice for ultra-high-resolution and high framerate video playback requirements, and Newtek NDI for IP-based streaming over LAN.

Realtime 3D and Compositing 

Realtime 3D GPU rendering coupled with high resolution GPU-based composting pipeline offers an unmatched 3D-2D hybrid environment. 

TouchDesigner’s 3D engine offers procedural geometry modeling using Academy-award-winning SOPs. Import geometry in FBX format with support for also importing, animations, cameras, textures and more. Furthermore, leverage your system’s GPU to manipulate and transform 1000s of geometry instances, all with interactive control and realtime performance.

PBR materials (Physically Based Rendering) and environment lights offer a new level of rendering quality to TouchDesigner. Substance Designer materials are natively supported giving access to a great community of material designers and hundreds of materials readily available for use. To deeply customize, GLSL Shaders and Materials or C++ effects can be brought into projects at any stage. 

Projection Mapping 
 
TouchDesigner’s built-in suite of projection mapping tools, features and open customization make projection projects easy.  
 
This set starts with the basic shaping of output with the “Stoner” tool which handles keystoning and grid-type mesh warping. Stoner and the “ProjectorBlend” tool which solves projector-blending can greatly facilitate initial projector setup.  
 
For 2D projection mapping and masking, the popular “Kantan Mapper” creates polygons or bezier layer shapes to map and mask anything a projector hits with light. Any image, movie, or texture can be applied to these shapes and manipulated with built-in re-shaping tools. 

Tokyo Art City
Tokyo Art City 

“Camschnappr” tackles more complicated 3D mapping. By simply lining up 6 points of a projected virtual model with the physical model, the projector’s position is calculated and the image is calibrated onto the projection surface. 
 
All projection mapping tools support multi-projector outputs and ultra-resolution video playback.

Interoperability 
 
TouchDesigner works well with its environment by providing native support for numerous input and output devices, web connectivity, video and audio devices as well as network-based communication protocols.

TouchDesigner on set of Alfonso Cuaron's Gravity
TouchDesigner on set of Alfonso Cuaron's Gravity

Seamlessly implemented popular devices like Kinect, Leap Motion or Intel Realsense allow for the creation of interactive pieces with little or no coding. A wide range of other sensors and elements including IoT devices can be utilized with natively supported protocols like TUIO, MQTT and OSC. 

Connecting and interoperating with 3rd party software such as Ableton Live, Max/MSP, Photoshop, vvvv, openFrameworks or Resolume makes TouchDesigner a well-tested part of larger creative pipelines. 

Virtual Reality 
 
TouchDesigner works seamlessly with its built-in VR tools, facilitating a quick and easy launchpad to virtual reality. VR in TouchDesigner lets users pre-visualize installations, view previous work from new perspectives, or create something entirely novel. 
 
Create and play interactive 360 movies as multi-camera inputs and the “Stitcher” tool enable realtime multi-camera stitching from VR at extremely high resolutions. 

Future of Music 360 Video
The Future of Music 360 Video

Native support for HTC Vive and Oculus and their controllers and trackers, with the specially-prepared VR Development Environment will help get your ideas up and running quickly. Projects may even be authored from inside the VR world with a virtual editor interface. 

Take off the head display and use Vive’s excellent low-latency 6 degree-of-freedom controller tracking to use as input devices.  Work with the Oculus Audio SDK to create 360 audio effects for your environments.

Lighting and Live Shows 

TouchDesigner has been used to drive groundbreaking and innovative live shows including Amon Tobin’s ISAM, Richie Hawtin’s Plastikman LIVE, and Robert Henke and Christopher Bauder’s Deep Web. The nature of these shows make it necessary to not only generate pixels projected or displayed on screens but also control a variety of stage equipment, be it lights, LEDs, lasers or winches.

With support for various DMX USB devices, direct protocol support for ArtNet and sACN as well as operators for the Ether Dream and Helios Laser DACs, virtually all elements on a stage can be covered.

To utilize tracking information from performers on stage, TouchDesigner includes native support for Microsoft Kinect, the BlackTrax and OptiTrack system. 

Phases at Day for Night Festival by AV&C + Houzé
Phases at Day for Night Festival by AV&C + Houzé

Phases Previz TouchDesigner Network
Phases Previz TouchDesigner Network

While DMX and ArtNet allow communication with lighting consoles, protocols standard to music performances keep TouchDesigner in contact with any instrument or controller capable of MIDI, OSC or Ableton’s new Link technology. 
 
Extensibility and Customization 
 
Python 3.5 lies at the heart of extensibility to TouchDesigner. Being deeply integrated via each operator’s python descriptor and accessible with parameter expressions, callbacks and event management, new functionality not available natively can be added using Python extension packages - for example standard support for the OpenCV python library opens new possibilities in the field of computer vision. 
 
Supporting GLSL vertex, geometry, pixel shaders and now also compute shaders are the elements of choice when creating custom effects or functionality for 2D textures and 3D materials.  
 
Interfacing with external SDKs or leveraging the GPU-accelerated API can be achieved by programming custom C++ operators extending the core toolset of TouchDesigner. 

Though project privacy has long been a feature of TouchDesigner's Pro licenses, 099 takes that feature a step further. In 099  individual privacy can be managed on the component level. Useful for artists and production houses looking to share some of their work, while still maintaining some degree of control over their intellectual property.   

Learn more about about TouchDesigner 099 features and to see what people are making with TouchDesigner visit the Derivative Blog