Learning animation / motion graphics with TD? SOPs?

Beginners
1

Hello,

I’m looking to start creating audio reactive visuals/motion graphics with touchdesigner for live shows but I struggle with learning how to build these models/structure in touchdesigner. I’ve got the interactive audio part down - TOPs, and CHOPs, no problem - it’s the 3d/2d modeling that I don’t know wth I’m doing with…

I’ve watched the resonate tutorial probably 13 - 15 times all the way through along with other videos, which taught me alot, but I still struggle to understand how I’m to create some of the things I want such as a lightning bolts, or balloons, bouncing balls, whatever…

Say for every Kick I want a mushroom cloud, or tidal wave, or anything to sweep across the screen… How would I create this mushroom cloud?

Like right now all I’m able to do is mess with some tops - I start with a ramp, export some audio parameters and then add some effects - and it can be cool, but I want things like shooting stars, and structures that a RAMP TOP cannot produce. I assume for this I need to use SOPs, but again I’m at a loss for how it’s all supposed to work.

Are there any good resource materials out there that might show how to create a skull, a tree, a butterfly, etc. etc. with TouchDesigner? I feel like I’ve watched the TD tutorials so many times it’s really hard for me to get anything new out of them anymore…

2

Have you looked at Help/Operator Snippets than searched out the sop section?

3

I learned how to animate in other 3d programs, once the basic workflow is understood you can apply it to touch… although it is a little clunky for 3d animation…

4

I dont remember any off the top of my head, but do you have much experience working with other 3D applications? It sounds like you might want to learn the basics of how you’d make those things in a simpler 3D application, and then as najrock suggest, moving that workflow over to TouchDesigner. If you have trouble making a skull or tidal wave in something like Cinema4d, which already has some pretty rich tools and operators, it’ll be hard to analyze what you need to do at TouchDesigner’s granular level. That make sense?

5

If you wanted to learn motion graphics with SOPs, you would probably want to research articles/demos/tutorials on procedural modelling to get ideas of workflow.

Try to keep your objects SIMPLE graphic abstract, and let the complexity come in how you manipulate that simple object over time.

One of objects you listed as an example were butterflies, which is a popular example for procedural modelling and animation.

The benefits of modeling procedurally is that you could at some point animate the creation of and variations in your butterfly-maker. These can all be driven by chops and expressions.

This is a really old page, but you can get ideas about butterfly creation from:

www-graphics.stanford.edu/course … tterflies/

or if you wanted something more lissajous looking:

mathworks.com/matlabcentral/ … utterfly.m

a houdini butterfly tutorial:
youtube.com/watch?v=2iKS4gXn_70

If you want to get something really fast off the ground, google graphic images of butterflies. Bring them in a movie top, then add trace sop, carve sop, extrude sop. Then manipulate every parameter of interest with chops, expressions you find in other files, or techniques demonstrated in the OP snippets help file.

Sops off the top of my head I can imagine being used in abstract butterfly creation/animation:

Trace
Circle & Line
Clip & Carve
Mirror
Twist
Sort
Limit
Point & Group
Sweep

Hope that helps. I’m a beginner with Touch myself, but having had some Houdini education the sops are more familiar to me.

6

motiongraphics also mentioned something that might be a good direction to explore, is watching houdini tutorials, because its procedural as well and really focuses on 3D work (albeit not in real time) from what I understand.