Share 099 palette on Dropbox

Techniques
1

Hi there,

I would like to share a way to share your TouchDesigner099 patches with your friends/colleagues using Windows, Dropbox and the TouchDesigner palette.

The problem is, I couldn’t find a way to configure the root path of the palette in TouchDesigner and, as far as I know, is always pointing to the Windows Documents\Derivative\Palette folder.
There is a solution to this problem using ‘mklink /D’. This little program shipped with Windows, creates a symbolic link of a directory. So it’s possible to link a certain directory to another.

  • Run ‘cmd’ with administrator access
  • go to the documents/derivative folder: cd \Users\Username\Documents\Derivative
  • Backup your palette: ren Palette Palette-backup
  • Make the link: mklink /D Palette e:\Path\ToDropboxFolder

Now when you start TouchDesigner your My Components palette will be empty. When you drag a new component to the palette it will be automatically uploaded to Dropbox.

When the palette is not in sync with your dropbox directory, simply press right-click on the ‘My components’ folder and press ‘refresh folder’. This will regenerate a JSON file called ‘paletteData.json’ and will fix your palette again.

I think this technique can also work for Mac users using the ‘ln’ command. Though I haven’t tested this.

Cheers,
Tim

[edit] I noticed this is only possible using touchdesigner099, since 088 doesnt use the json data file to store all file information.

Be sure to link the right palette folder. The 099 palette folder is located in the User\Documents\Derivative folder instead of User\Derivative.

2 Likes
2

Ugh this is so great.

The Mac command is ‘ln -s /path/to/your/palette /Users/Username/Library/Application\ Support/Derivative/TouchDesigner099/Palette’

GOOD STUFF

3

I have been trying to do this for a little while.
It seems like the symlink thing works well.
However, it would be great if the palette supported different directories.

It seems that 099 has a JSON file :
\Documents\Derivative\Palette\paletteData.json

This json file seems to put the files discovered by the palette within this folder.
Can new items be appended to this json? or will it be overwritten when the palette reloads?
Can new directories be added to the palette without being in one specific place?

4

It’s possible to symlink a subdirectory instead of the main palette folder. The paletteData.json will still be locally generated in the main palette folder (searching through all subdirectories so also the possible symlinks inside the palette folder)
This way you can link multiple directories to different locations.