UI look&feel: optimization questions

General TouchDesigner Discussion
1

Hi, I’m considering creating a fancier UI for our projects, and I have a number of questions which an help me determine the best course to take:

I’m planning to create a library of icon backgrounds to be use throughout. for the most part, let’s say these are button backgrounds.

I intend for each button to “select” the proper background.

1 - given that a button has different states, what are the advantages and disadvantages of having - say - 3 selects (off, on, rollover) and a switch (based upon panel state) before the text top is comped over the bg, as opposed to 1 select which - based upon panel state - selects the proper library bg directly?

2 - given a full screen UI with buttons on it - already calculated - does it make a difference to the graphic card render rate whether or not the buttons have a clear background or a texture/busier image?

thanks,
dani

2

  1. There shouldn’t be any difference. Both Select TOPs and Switch TOPs are instances, so they don’t use up any extra GPU resources.

  2. Yes, having a Background TOP in a Panel does increase the cost of rendering. Its not huge, but its there. There is both a CPU cost (involved with setting up the TOP to be rendered to the screen), as well as a GPU cost, involved with sampling the texture as it renders the panel. Again though, this isn’t a large cost. The busyness of the Background TOP doesn’t matter though, a black background TOP is the same cost as a busy one.

3

Thanks,

but since a button has a background top no matter what, in order to display content, which is typically a Text TOP, does it really make a difference whether or not the background top is a transparent text top - or a text top over a background? (once the text over bg is done I mean)

4

No there’s no difference in that case.