VR collision detection with geometry + Ableton Live

Hi. I have currently built a working prototype of a musical performance system inside of Unity, but am currently assessing if TouchDesigner might be better suited to handle the project. I am wondering if TouchDesigner is able to detect collisions between HTC Vive controllers and 3D models? Could these collisions be used to then trigger MIDI sequences in Ableton Live? Also, could the 3D models be moved around in space using the controllers?

Your help with these questions would be greatly appreciated and would enable me to make a better decision about whether to switch over to TouchDesigner or not. My performance system doesn’t actually utilize the Vive headset - so I don’t care about any visual or rendering gains/losses that might happen if I switch over. Getting Unity to talk to Ableton seems to be quite difficult, however, and from what I have heard TouchDesigner has communication with Ableton pretty much built in. But I am not sure on the specifics…

I’m also looking to first connect Arduino and later some gyroscope/accelerometer motion processing units to my performance system. Getting the serial data from these into Unity or Max/MSP wirelessly is also looking like a daunting R&D path. Perhaps TouchDesigner is better suited for this as well? Please let me know!

Any information or advice is, again, greatly appreciated. Thanks!

TD and Ableton integration is amazing.

As far as collision, there are several choices. You can do it yourself via chops or via glsl. Or you can use existing physics libraries like the Bullet physics library that Vincent Houze has so kindly ported to TD via C++ chop. You do need a commercial license to use it though. Nvidia’s Flex is also a choice, which Vincent has created a C++ chop for as well.

There are a few tricks on this forum for collisions that will get you there (also a full VR HTC Vive framework with controller collisions (I use it)), and sound integration with Ableton is absolutely a better option than Unity. My 2 cents (I actually spoke to someone Saturday night about this at a meetup, wonder if it’s you :slight_smile:).

I wonder if that was me, Priam?

I’d be interested to hear more about the musical performance system, as it does sound quite similar to the framework I’m envisioning for the creation of a live performance environment using dance.

also likely that this forum thread is not the place for that discussion, so feel free to PM me if you like :slight_smile: