Tell operator start cooking and then stop after a set time - Animation one-shot

Beginners
1

This may not be the best description but I’m not sure how to title this. So let me explain.

I’m using TDAbleton to run a sequence of music clips in the session view. Each clip is set to play the next scene when it finishes. Each clip has an animation associated with it in TouchDesigner. I’m using various techniques for these animations from panning images, to animations built with Noise and Ramp TOPs.

My network tracks the playhead position of a clip in Ableton and when the clip finishes, it increments a Switch TOP to show the next animation. The playhead position also controls various attributes of my animations like the Y position of an image or its opacity. These animations are running all the time. Because of that, I get occasional flashes in between my animations when the Switch CHOP increments. For instance I want one animation to fade in. When the Switch CHOP increments it will sometimes show the fully opaque version of the animation for a moment. It’s as if the Switch has a brief delay.

The solution I’m hoping for is to keep my animations from running constantly and set them so they’re not cooking until it’s their turn to run. Then when they’re done, stop them from cooking to turn them off. Basically trigger a one-shot of these animations. They’re off by default, told to play, and then stop.

Here’s examples files. You’ll need Ableton to run this. You can see threes animations that are designed to play in sequence. There is no flashing in this project because it’s simple. The main project I’m working on is much more complex and shows the flashes I mentioned above.

Any tips or direction are appreciated.
TDAbleton Playhead Position Example.zip (349.2 KB)

2

Just from a quick read have you tried sceneChanger in the Palette under Tools? It might be something that works for you. Hope this helps.

3

Thanks for the tip. I always forget about the palette browser! Unfortunately it sounds like the sceneChanger is only designed for videos. In my case I’m using a combination of images being transformed and custom COMPS that contain generative animations.

4

No it can switch between animations too. Try it.

1 Like
5

Good to know. The documentation mentioned videos specifically so I didn’t look too deeply.

I found what seems to be the issue. TDAbleton values jump to -1 for a few frames before updating to their correct value. In this case I’m using the end_marker value in conjunction with the play_position to determine an animations current state. Like the position or opacity of a TOP. When it jumps back to -1, this is causing the “flash” that I’m seeing because the opacity should be 0 but goes to 1 for a moment. I know this probably doesn’t make sense because the core value I’m working with is negative so you’d think the opacity would still stay negative. A negative is being multiplied by a negative in my case.

Anyway, for anyone who finds this, TDAbleton values go negative for a moment when changing clips in a new scene. That was the problem.