Do most artists finish everything inside TouchDesigner or edit later elsewhere?

Beginners
1

Hey everyone,
I’ve been following PPPANIK’s Adventures in Typography tutorial and similar TouchDesigner motion works.

One thing I’m curious about, when artists create full videos like those intros or typography animations, do they usually build and render the entire thing directly inside TouchDesigner,
or do they export the visuals and then edit / composite everything later in software like After Effects, Premiere, or DaVinci Resolve?

I’m trying to understand what’s the common workflow:
is TouchDesigner typically the full pipeline, or mostly for generating visual sequences that are later refined elsewhere?

Would love to hear how you guys approach it!
Thanks in advance.

2

Every person’s workflow may vary, but I always export ProRes videos and do a final edit and color grade in Premiere or After Effects. When working with point cloud videos especially or gaussian splatting, the vignette effect and a little bit of curves really makes the video pop. This does turn out to me really heavy on your hard drive and you need to have a lot of storage but for bigger projects that are non-realtime I always render out multiple passes or options and then edit it all together in post.

1 Like
3

Using nothing but TD to make videos is more of a sport than an actual sensible workflow - but it is incredibly satisfying.

[auto-promo] Here are a couple of visualizers I made straight out of TD, directly uploaded the TDMovieOut in Youtube:

Dhensbro - The Psychanthrope - YouTube

Dhensbro - La Planète - YouTube

ORAGE - ECHT

2 Likes
4

Thanks for sharing your insights!! especially the tip about adding vignette and curves for point cloud or Gaussian splatting videos. Super helpful! Thank you so much. I appreciate it a lot :star_struck:

5

Thanks for sharing your insights and awesome works!!:grinning_face: So when you record, do you adjust parameters live in sync with the music kind of like performing it in real time?

6

I start by building something playable live but to record I always end up keyframing everything with the Animation COMP or Timer CHOPs (leaving some parameters audio driven). If you drop frames, the audio will be ruined, so you need to turn off realtime.
This is where Jarrett from derivative explains in depth how to set up TD to make music videos:

3 Likes
7

Thank you so much!! :heart_eyes: super helpful!!

8

I like to make several takes in TD then use Apple Final Cut Pro to edit, trim, add fade-ins, titles, colour correct etc which seems easier in FCPx than in TD. I agree the Animation Comp is super useful for fine tuned control. I know some people don’t like it but you can do very subtle curves for almost any aspect you want.