Set animation comp speed with bpm/beat chop

Hi everyone,

Hit a block with TD, I have a set of music at a set bpm (112) and I’m trying to get the animation comp with all my keyframes to “play” at the bpm. If I change the Bpmin TD or beat chop I can’t change the speed of the animation comp.

Its like with my music I have 2 bars that start at 1:1:1 and end at 3:1:1
So a simple test would be a 2 bar ramp that ends at the end of 2 bars. And that If i then change the BPM that the ramp still ends in 2 bars.
Any and all advice welcome !

Set the Animation COMP’s Play Mode = Use Input Index and then set Input Index Unit = Fraction. Now you can simply plug the ‘ramp’ channel fro the Beat CHOP into the Animation COMP’s CHOP input.

Hi Ben, thanks for the speedy reply.
I’ve got the speed of the animations to change now with the bpm but theres still something I’m not getting with the process . (on the right track though ) !
I’m not sure how to explain this so here gos…
So to try and analyse it all, i set the global transport/timeline to a 112 bpm, set the view to beats and nudge the marker till I have 2:1:1 I then draw a perfect linear ramp from start to end.

When I press play it trigger s multiple times, I see that this is because fraction is triggering multiple times before the loop is finished (makes sense as its the fractional remainder)
To try and clarify.
If i change my bpm to 50 or 300 I want that one ramp I’ve drawn to follow the bpm, I’d expect the ramp on 5- bpm to become verrrrry long in my animation comp and very short on 300 bpm.
I’ve tried this with all the settings I can find like seconds or frames for input, no joy.
Sorry if I’m not explaining this all clearly, still getting used to used to TD’s workflow.

Probably best to post example file.

You need to drive it with a Beat CHOP, to give you a cycle either per beat or bar, whatever you want. Hence using fractional units as the Ramp is 0-to-1.

I get that part Ben , once again I think I’m phrasing things incorrectly. My bad.
I can past a file tomorrow (bit of a mess right now with it all connected to a glsl shader so i’ll have to strip it down first)
If I have a 3 minute piece I want to make then fraction doesn’t work as it’s too short.
So if I have a 3 minute piece of animations I want the whole animation comp to play faster if i speed up the bpm ( so it wouldn’t be 3 minutes anymore maybe 2)
and for it to be longer if i slow down the bpm.
Do’s that make it clearer ?

I understand now. There are many ways of doing this, but here’s an easy way to start thinking about it.

First, I created an Animation COMP 3 minutes long. To do this, on the Range page I set Type = Custom and End = 180 using units of seconds.

Now you can edit this animation as a 3 minute animation.

Next you need to decide how to drive the animation forward using one of the Play Modes. You could do some CHOP work and drive it by index, but since we just want to change the playback speed relative to some “normal” speed, its easy to use the Speed parameter in Sequential Mode.

First I set what bpm I want the animation to play back at normal speed, ie. what bpm it will take exactly 3 minutes. For this example I set that to 120 in the bpm_normalSpeed CHOP. Then if I take the bpm I playing back at and divide by this bpm_normalSpeed, I get a fractional number I can use directly in the speed parameter. So I used a Beat CHOP to get the bpm you are setting in the Timeline (in case you are using this bpm for other beat ramps etc) and put this along with the bpm_normalSpeed into a Math CHOP and set it to Divide CHOP inputs. Now setting bpm to 240 results in 2 = twice as fast, and bpm 60 results in 0.5 = half as fast etc. Then just export this value to the Speed parameter of the Animation COMP.
NOTE: Instead of using a Beat CHOP I could make the first input another Constant CHOP and completely divorce it from the timeline’s bpm.

Also , if you decide you actually want the 3 minute animation to take 3 minutes at 135bpm, simple change the bpm_normalSpeed value to 135.

Hope this helps get you started.
bpmAnimationSpeed.toe (4.81 KB)

Thank you so much for taking the time to put this together for me Ben ! You are a lifesaver !
I already had Touch designer hooked up To ableton (Max 4 live) via osc to compose music with the demo visuals I’m making. The BPM and timeline location of Live was synced to TD (TD as master) and this was the last thing I was missing.
This example is just perfect and will provide a solid timing system for me to explore connecting TD with other software.
:slight_smile: