As I prepare for my new job which starts on January 4th, I’m taking some time to learn Derivative’s TouchDesigner. It’s a realtime procedural 3D / compositing tool. Well, it’s actually so much more than that, but it’s very difficult to describe.

Anyway, I’m trying to learn it. And I’ve found the best way to learn stuff (for me) is to take something I’ve already made and try to recreate it in the new environment. So, that’s what I’ve started doing here. I’m not sure how much further I want to go with this, but it’s nice to know that I could pull this much together after about an hour’s worth of work.

This software is terribly powerful, and more and more documentation / improvements / tutorial videos are being added all the time. It’s making me very excited about 2010.

+ View the piece on Flickr.

+ View the piece on Flickr.

+ View the piece on Flickr.

I recently discovered a huge disconnect between text-based 3D graphics programming and my brain. It was quite an unpleasant discovery.

Out of frustration, I decided to turn to a more graphical, procedural approach. For some reason when it comes to 3D, I really need a UI and “objects”. It’s all too abstract when I’m dealing with lines of code.

So I’m trying out visual procedural programming. And I’m starting with Derivative’s TouchDesigner. I was introduced to the application long ago, back in 2005 at FITC. But it’s gone through a complete rewrite and UI overhaul.

A certain Steve Mason (former coworker at Odopod and most recently at Obscura Digital) re-introduced me to the application a couple months ago. He’s done some seriously amazing stuff with it already.

And tonight, I made a spherical 3D particle cloud. Nothing revolutionary, but there is some serious power and possibility embedded in this application. The UI is absolutely next level and intriguing. I highly recommend you download it and have a run through the video tutorial screencasts. It’s a Windows-only application (sadly). And it’s still buggy since it’s in very active development. I’d recommend you download the latest experimental release. I had more luck with it than the main release on their Downloads page from May of this year.