Instancing in TouchDesigner 1/3: Drawing from SOPs, Coloring by Points, Basic Animation
What is instancing, and how can we use it? Instancing allows us to draw a single shape, or SOP, many times, more efficiently than if we were to copy it over and over. The Geo comp allows us to define how each instance of the SOP is drawn, using several different control fields which can take instructional data from almost any source, provided we format the data correctly. In this video, we discuss how to draw shapes in specific formations using positional data from other shapes, how to color shapes based on their location, and how to animate our shapes individually and as a group.
Instancing in TouchDesigner 2/3: Making TOPs Pop in 3D!
In this video, we discuss how to map the pixels of an image onto instanced boxes in a grid formation. When we use the r channel to displace the boxes in the z plane, we see an example of a way to add depth to a 2D texture. This technique can be used on live RGB or depth camera feeds for a simple way to enable interaction with geometry.
INSTANCING IN TOUCHDESIGNER 3/3: Animating with tops, audio reactive geometry, rgb to xyz
In the final video in this series, we look at using TOPs to previsualize and control our animations, introduce the 'Audio Analysis' tool to give us some ideas for how to make our geometry dance to music, and finally peer under the hood into how our TOPs are really working by generating position data without any SOP-to-CHOPs at all!