Introducing TDBitwig - Bridging TouchDesigner and Bitwig
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Watched the TouchDesigner Roundtable XXV video.
If we consider âcommand and controlâ tdbitwig would appear to be on the control side.
Command would encompass keyboard shortcuts or their API equivalents.
Say⌠buttons to trigger keyboard commands and more powerfully⌠macros to automate actions i.e create a project with 1 group containing 16 tracks assigned to midi ch1-16 etcâŚ
Thanks
Worth noting the wiki says Bitwig 5 + but the script is only included in the pre-release 5.0.10 by default.
Can confirm it seems to work fine with 5.0.9 though (from what Iâve tried so far, by dragging the bwextension from TD)
Could you plz elaborate? I canât seem to find a way to download 5.0.10 (I suppose Iâd have to have the paid versionâŚ), and donât know how I could make the connection work with 5.0.9.
Thank you in advance!
5.0.10 (and now .11 I believe) is pre-release and available on the account page with Bitwig if you have an active license.
If you donât have an active upgrade plan, just follow the docs in the guide posted to the wiki (Iâm not running pre-releases right now and had no issues getting the extension provided by TD to work with 5.0.9. TD build 2022.35230 includes this although the pre-release of TD 2023.10130 doesnât include the TDBitwig extensions)
this is a dream come true for me. as an avid bws/td av creator, this is finally the functionality Iâve been waiting for! Swapped to ableton last year to make use of tdableton and was able to exact some interesting results, but left me missing my preferred daw. Went through some steps recreating some of the functionality I had used, essentially via OSC/internal midi. This was adequate but not nearly as seamless to work with.
I am very much excited to become intimately familiar with this tool, and the possibilities that await
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Thanks Trith - updated the docs to site the exact versions.
Also it looks like Bitwig 5.0.11 can be downloaded for Trial versions now and has the Derivative Controller Extension included.
This is awesome. Bitwig has a lot of great modulators and features that will mesh well with TD. I have an expired update plan but it looks like I still get access to TDBitwig, which is nice.
The only unfortunate part is that I use Bitwig on my Linux PC, where it works fantastically, and I have to use TD on my crappy old Windows laptop. Maybe the collaboration portends good things on that front? Probably not, but I can dreamâŚ
Since i would love to create a Cliplauncher interface for Bitwig, i was stumbling upon the following screenshot in your derivative wiki:
It states /clip/loopLength
I would love to be able to build a touch interface which looks little bit like the push3 for Ableton, where you see clip playback progress as moving color within the clip! Rectangle containers representing the clips, and color filling up the clip from left to right, representing the playback-progress.
With âloopLengthâ mentioned in the derivative Screenshot, i was hoping that we re able to build something similar for Bitwig, with TD.
But it seems that some of the /clip adresses, like /clip/looplength canât
a) be accessed (seen and controlled for each clip)?
b) be used to calculate the clip playback progress, because we would need a âclip playback time counter from start to finishâ information or something for that.
Long story short:
My feature wish for the future would be:
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please dear derivative, could you use your voice to ask Bitwig to give us the function of âClip Playback Progressâ, so we can enjoy building a Bitwig cliplauncher which is 100% awesome and effective (due to the good overview)!
I already made that feature suggestion to Bitwig, but maybe you yourself see potential in it
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Please let us set the /clip/loopEnabled which i saw in the screenshot. It would be nice for quickly turning the whole Cliplauncher (or individual clips) into âoneshotâ mode.
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Please let us use the /clip/LoopLength on all clips, so we can adjust looplength on the fly in a liveset. (Could be a nice âquick adjustmentâ button when recording live, and wanting to cut the last bar)
Thanks alot for your awesome work,
Best, Philip
Hi Sternenherz,
I agree with your desires - 1, 2 and 3. I have reasonable list of things I will cover with Bitwig team once this release settles down. I will be sure these 3 items get good attention. In the meantime did you look at the beta components in the TDBitwig Palette. There is a clip follower that kind of does what you are asking. Its beta because as you mention here clip following is not fully exposed the Bitwig Controller API⌠In the beta setup it uses a clipslot component to drive a clip component - and it uses the ability to select a clip to extract the clip information. Itâs a hack but it might get you somewhereâŚ
Thank you for the reply, this is very nice to hear! 
Sadly, iâm not a programmer-minded person overall, just a very controller-interested musician - so concerning most hacks, iâm a little bit too dumb for that. Iâll just wait till Bitwig gives out some more goodies via their API it seems, haha!
Just today when watching a TD stream from âTDSWâ, i also got the idea how awesome it would be to have full control over midi-clip content. I imagine being able to actually see Loop beginning, Loop end of the Clip, and all note locations in a piano-roll-grid â this would also give out the possibility to make some visual touch-controlled Sequencer, maybe, via TD. Just an idea.