RFE: Unreal engine render TOP(or another high end renderer)

Achim · February 6, 2021, 3:21pm

As TouchDesigner will likely not be able to keep up with the features and image quality of modern engines like Unreal engine, I though it might be time to discuss if its possible to “completely/tightly” integrate an external render engine into TouchDesigner. The other players are doing the same:

Ventuz recently integrated Unreal engine Ventuz Unreal Public Beta , so integration seems to be “allowed” and even encouraged, as they received an Epic MegaGrant. Looks like the integration isn’t very deep for now.
vvvv integrated stride engine vvvv beta Turorial | quick intro to VL.Stride - YouTube and this one seems to be a very tight integration, much how I would envision it for TouchDesigner

Off the top of my head I am thinking about an unreal render TOP, that (as far as possible) works the same as the native render TOP. I can imagine we would also need a family of Unreal (Geo, Camera, Light, MAT) OPs that “just” collect and pass parameters/data to the matching objects inside Unreal engine. And of course a clever way to control post effects.

Anyways, looking forward to hear other peoples thoughts

pointshader · February 4, 2021, 10:24pm

This would be great! But if you need something that looks prettier now, check out the NotchTOP. The licensing is definitely complicated and expensive compared to Unreal, but Notch blocks pair nicely with TouchDesigner media servers as their features complement each other quite nicely. And it is fast to develop nice looks in Notch.

Also, there’s a Spout plugin for unreal. Not as nice as native integration, but for 80% of use cases it should be fine.

vytunis1 · February 14, 2021, 8:58pm

TD definetly needs better quality rendering with or without unreal integration.

shieman · February 15, 2021, 1:30pm

Hi,

There is a NDI plugin on NDI internet site for unreal engine.
I tested it and use it with Resolume, that works great.
Did not test TD but no reason…

Better resolutions and more possibility than Spout i think. And i tried Spout with unreal with no succes on the 4.26, the free plugin in marketplace do not send images and crashes unreal when i change settings…

jacqueshoepffner · February 15, 2021, 4:52pm

Personaly I use Unity (I prefer it, but taste and colors…) with OSC (uniOSC package) from TD to Unity and Spout (KlakSpout package) from Unity to TD. Very stable and easy to use. I tried Unreal but found OSC and Spout not so easy to use. Now with Bolt inside Unity I doesnt found Blueprint son great.