TouchEngine for UE 5.2.1: Editor mode, CHOP rework and more!
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Hey that looks great!
I read the documentation but I don’t understand exactly how or when it would be necessary to use this component.
For example, what would be the difference from sending CHOP data through OSC instead of using this plugin?
Is the plugin running the tox file without the need of TouchDesigner running? My guess is that it would generate a separate process right? Sort of like the HDA system of Houdini?
I wanted to explore the examples from the samples but my commercial license is not valid for the latest TD build, so would be lovely to get a few insights on where this could be used or examples of uses that it already had 
Thanks,
Sebi
Hello @eusebi
And thanks for the interest.
That’s a bit of your own call at the end of the day. It is indeed running a subprocess, TouchEngine, rather than a full TouchDesigner process with its UI and such. So it’s expected to be bit more lightweight overall.
Another advantage is that it doesn’t require you to work with network protocols such as OSC, and it is also fully integrated into blueprints, with additional custom nodes that we provide and that hopefully make the whole experience even smoother!
So, in the case where you are working with CHOPs, you can read from the CHOP output right away, no matter the number of samples they have, from within the blueprints. Working with parameters, updating a parameter get passed to the running process right away… you don’t have to add code for that. You can interact in a similar fashion to the Engine COMP, with the top level parameters.
I’m not too familiar with HDAs but I believe that Houdini does have something similar in the Houdini Engine.
Recently I saw @kefon having some fun with the plugin in a nice use case https://twitter.com/parseerror_/status/1668961886669340675
Best,
Michel
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Great that’s really insightful!
I will check it out this coming week
Best,
Sebi
Hiya
Looks great! Thanks for your hard work.
Does the TouchEngine work with an Education license?
Getting the below error message once the files have been copied into the UE Project Plugin folder, the plugin activated and UE restarted:
The following modules are missing or built with a different engine version:
TouchEngine
TouchEngineEditor
TouchEngineD3D11RHI
TouchEngineD3D12RHI
TouchEngineVulkanRHI
Would you like to rebuild them now?
The rebuild attempt fails with the following dialog:
Project could not be compiled. Try rebuilding from source manually.
I’m running UE 5.2.1 and TD 2022.33910 but the EDU license.
I’d be grateful for any help!
Thanks
Phelan
Yes, TouchEngine works with TouchDesigner Educational licenses. I’ll let @JetXS comment on where to get instructions to recompile, think the instructions are described in the Github readme/help.
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Hey @PhelanKane
Can you please go through the following ? https://github.com/TouchDesigner/TouchEngine-UE/blob/UE5.2-Release/docs/FAQ.md#i-have-placed-the-plugin-in-the-plugin-folder-but-my-project-doesnt-start-anymore
If that doesn’t help, can you please share the build logs so that we can see where it might fails ?
Thanks,
Michel
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Hiya
Thanks so much. I got it working.
This might help someone else:
I had to update to VS2022 (I was on VS2019) and install the workloads listed in this doc.
UE 5.2 had to be configured via Edit >Editor Preferences > Source Code > Visual Studio 2022.
To get the Samples project working I had to recompile the plugin binaries in VS via this.
However, VS threw an error about the Houdini Engine and wouldn’t compile until I uninstalled it. Beyond my knowledge as to why! Maybe it was just my system…
Thanks again for your help and a great tool!
P
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Is it mandatory to use version 2022.33910, or is it just recommended?
I would like to test some stuff before purchasing an upgrade
@v.rtx_void if you’re on an earlier 2022 version it might work sufficiently for testing, possibly with degraded performance.
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Has anyone experienced this error after going through the install setup? The following dump is from saved/logs/TouchEngineUESamp.log
[2023.08.29-21.04.42:861][115]LogTouchEngine: Started load for ../../../../../../Users/razer/Downloads/TouchEngine-UE-Samples-1.2.0/TouchEngine-UE-Samples-1.2.0/Content/./TDToxFiles/UESample_Component_01_EnginePerform.tox
[2023.08.29-21.04.45:168][254]LogTouchEngine: Error: TouchEngine error - load() severe tox file error: The TouchEngine process crashed or stopped responding.
[2023.08.29-21.04.45:168][254]TouchEngine: Error: TouchEngine error - load() severe tox file error: The TouchEngine process crashed or stopped responding.
[2023.08.29-21.04.45:168][254]LogTouchEngine: Warning: Finished loading TouchEngine instance with ../../../../../../Users/razer/Downloads/TouchEngine-UE-Samples-1.2.0/TouchEngine-UE-Samples-1.2.0/Content/./TDToxFiles/UESample_Component_01_EnginePerform.tox with error: load() severe tox file error: The TouchEngine process crashed or stopped responding.
[2023.08.29-21.04.45:168][254]LogTouchEngine: Warning: FTouchEngine::GetSupportedPixelFormat: Called when TouchEngine was not yet loaded. There are no meaningful results, yet.
I followed the build setup found here https://github.com/TouchDesigner/TouchEngine-UE-Samples/blob/UE5.2-Release/docs/getting-started.md
I downloaded the Engine from source and then built the samples project in VS Studio 2022. I also made sure to have all the necessary plugins that @PhelanKane specified as well in that link. The Build was successful but I did notice that I got the message
========== Rebuild All: 1 succeeded, 0 failed, 1 skipped ==========
At the end. I’m wondering if there is a necessary build step that is getting skipped or if that actually doesn’t matter. I have my commercial license going with Version 2022.33910 and it feels like I had everything configured correctly. I’m also familiar with the build workflow as I was able to get the old release of the TouchEngine plugin working fine. Any tips would be appreciated on how to resolve this. Thanks!
Oh lol the reason it was not loading was because I had the new 2023 Touch Experimental Build installed in parallel!
Just add a shortcut to the proper build next to your .tox files or use the environment variable and that should let you have multiple builds.
Ah, this should still work - are you just running the examples or your own project?