What you are seeing is the expected result from the TimeMachine TOP. It’s first input is a always updating Texture 3D where the text is scaled to different sizes in each saved frame:
The TimeMachine TOP now uses that as the source input and its second input as the lookup index int the Texture 3D, meaning in your case, every black pixel from the second input will be replaced with the pixel from the same location of slice -60 in the Texture 3D TOP and every white pixel with the corresponding pixel of slice 0 in the Texture 3D TOP.
So depending on the second input to the TimeMachine TOP, this can lead to elements from the first input to seem to show up twice as they have different locations in the various slices saved in the Texture 3D TOP:
Is this happening because now TOPs processes data differently in 2023 version compared to 2020 version? … because in the tutorial, that duplication issue doesn’t happen.
What do you mean by “slice -60 in the Texture 3D TOP and every white pixel with the corresponding pixel of slice 0 in the Texture 3D TOP.”? I did not specify the numerical value of ‘60’ anywhere.
Just finished a second attempt just to see whether I missed something or not.
Built this from scratch. The same duplication problem appears. It seems as if something new has happened in v2023 of touchdesigner that the tutor didn’t do in her old version of TD.
the biggest change is that since then we have added Output pages to many Generator TOPs where the input to an operator like a Ramp TOP is automatically composited over the generated ramp. The old behavior is to just set the resolution of the Ramp TOP from the input. You can achieve this by going to the Output page of the Ramp TOP and setting the Combine with Input parameter to “Set Resolution Only”.
Now you will see that your Period parameter is set to “0.11” causing the same duplication which you can also see in the video happening at time 9:37
Change back the Period parameter to “1” and the duplication will be gone.
Maybe our documentation explains how the time machine works:
The Time Machine TOP combines pixels in a sequence of images stored in a Texture 3D TOP. Whereas “morphing” warps an image “spatially” (in xy), Time Machine warps images only in time.
Time Machine, originally known as “tima” in PRISMS, was first used in 1995 for warping effects in Ghost in the Shell, a Japanese anime cyber film that heavily used PRISMS for camera perspective effects, compositing, 3D and effects.
You must connect a Texture 3D TOP to the Time Machine’s first input. It uses this array of images and displays different depths of the 3D texture.
The second input determines the time offset of the output image. The second input is expected to be monochrome, but uses the red channel when it is not monochrome. By default, where there is a black pixel in the second input, it gets the oldest layer of the 3D texture. Where there is a white pixel in the second input, it gets the most recent layer of the 3D texture. Black Offset and White Offset adjust the range of time that the black to white parts of the image are offset within. For example, if Black Offset is -10 and White Offset is 0, then a black pixel would be 10 frames behind in time, a white pixel the current frame, and a 50% grey pixel would be 5 frames behind in time (in between the Black and White Offsets).
Also check out the OPSnippets for some more examples that might illustrate the Time Machine TOP further.
