Hey,
I am looking for good resources to get a solid base for the topics mentioned in the title. I am not looking for necessarily TD specific books, but more something that introduces some fundamental design principles, techniques, algorithms on top of which TD projects can be designed.
My problem is that at the moment I am happy to follow tutorials of different video effects or generative visuals, implement them and then play around/modify them, but as soon as I am in front of an empty project and ready to create something unique, I feel very much lost. I imagine if I had a few of these handles/basic techniques, it would be much easier to go play around with them and create something new.
Let me know if I should try to elaborate more on what exactly I am looking for, but it’s a bit hard, because I am also not 100% sure what I am missing:)
Cheers in advance!
I suggest looking on college textbook sites. You don’t have to look for textbooks per say, but as someone who is studying this material personally, you’ll find a lot of resources in there that are specifically geared towards concepts and techniques instead of just having you do a project.
Few things come to mind:
the first one is, depending on where you live, hit the local library or get a train to get to a larger library nearby and have a look around. Just follow your guts and get whichever book you feel attracted to; this could be “within topic” like visual arts, generative arts etc… but dig also anything else like books about photography (composition, framing…) , or graphic novels, books about maps, painting styles…
The second one is a book called Generative Design, you can find it online in PDF I think; I got the actual book years ago and still get back to it every now and then and I read it and I love it.
The list could go on but the next thing that comes to mind is the Book of Shaders
Adding to the suggestion of @FaustoB, many of the examples of the Generative Design book have been ported to TouchDesigner: Generative Design - Derivative