Help Needed: Difficult Things to Learn for Beginners

How about start up with a several cool pieces of 5 min. hands-on with Vimeo, sample files and narration (= written out script) page by page.

Ideally, beginners (incl. me and my son) want to learn TD077 FTE specific glossary (terminology?) with “fun” with the cool art pieces on the hands-on process.
Russ’ 5 min Vimeo tutorials are not the best but “better.”

Ask Greg for further advice.

In the past decade, the attitude was surely “right.”
Greg started Derivative with as a few men company with Rob Bairos and steadily growing 10 - 12 people companies with terrific “hard-core” user base. I was very happy to hear this from Greg in this recent visit.

Nowadays, $1,000 MacBook w/GeForce is far faster than $50,000 PersonalIRIS in early 1980s like you show on my YouTube channel.
A iPhone is also faster than arcade box in 1980s on which RidgeRacer was running.
In short, the difference of $5,000 high-end monster box and $1,000 of MacBook is almost nothing.

In other words, to get “critical mass (roughly 90 - 95% of the group is a common people like me” involved with TD community is one of the most important factors for both Derivative and Early adaptors like y’all for the coming decade to grow faster and bigger.

In my history with Greg in 1980s-1990s, we both enjoyed good (fair? so-so?, whatever) sales in a several leading-edge industries like Namco/SEGA.
SESI, then, enjoyed the same things in Hollywood.
We did not forget to offer schools a big discount for a set of SGI/Prisms/Houdini in order to supply animators to the industries. Like Softbank, in the launch period, give iPhone 3G/iPad 3G for free with 2 years commitment. (ie. Prisms/Houdini was positioned as our important future revenue sources and SGI was “worthless and substantially free” in my marketing focus.
But I recall we somewhat misunderstand something.
“High-end” or “leading-edge” tool and digital content is “double-edged sword”, especially, in Japan. It is too much costly in terms of support for software vendors, as well as end users.
Thus, big investments suffered those big industries in 1980s-1990s and was merged by the Bad Money.
As you see here, our unique subcultures influencing Western countries are based on hundreds of years of “Wabi-Sabi” aesthetics in its nature.

From a commercialism point of view, “Bad money drives out good” like we saw with Microsoft, Autodesk (3DS Max) and motiondive(?).

Bad money always buy arms and pillages food as you see in communiist China and U.S. in the recent decades.
Similar things happens in software/web service industries in the past two decades.

I’ve never seen your artworks yet, but I guess it’s good for you, in you specific case.
In general, we, common people is looking foward “a super man” or “a super star” from a few % from a “critical mass” as in the case with art scene and entertainment industries to grow healthy hierarchy structures of user community.

At least, Greg is carefully watching to grow this “mass” for the coming decade with over 20 yrs. of marketing/technical experiences since he launced SESI with Kim Davidson.

Agreed.
I think this is a universal (ie. not specific to Japan) RFE from the rest of the world, but priority should be to fix TD077Pro for the on-going high-end users due to the limitation of resources, I guess.

Agreed.
Once, we Japanese thought alphabet was “cool” but we realize that Japanese characters are cool, cooler, coolest, too, like ya’ll see in most Western countries.

ImageSearch TouchDesigner Tutorial
derivative.ca/wiki/index.php … Search_Vid
…inspires me new installation style and VJs events to be happened in the near future in Tokyo and all over the world (common people like us get frustrated with the stupid government parties and too many stupid and flassy politicians) to cast strong political messages without a fear of copyright protection.

My small personal anxiety is that Microsoft fonts is not cool with which TD is running…

100% agree with that.

I also agree with Achim that example files are a great asset to learning. Video tutorials do have an advantage, but you can place notes into nodes to help users understand what is happening.

As I step back into Touch. I’m looking forward to finding Designer files to play with. Excited to see that the Touch Player is back!

im not having nay luck finding any tutorial on suimple audio analysis of audio in…

to make any audio reactive piece you should be able to at least pull out some frequency bands easily… lets say mid low and high from a typical music performance…

is there a simple toe set up that does this…

im inspired by the mutek alvo performance and rasternation ars performances these seem to be doing something similar…

any links to vid tuts im missing?

the audio spectrum vid in tutorials is missing?
actually its not missing just not loading in chrome on mac or on win7…

thanks

Take a look at this e-book:
andrew-lowell-productions.co … urces.html

All our video tutorials are here:
derivative.ca/wiki077/index. … :Tutorials

And a tutorial based in audio analysis is here:
derivative.ca/wiki077/index. … veform_Vid

This tutorial is on the advanced side, but there is an accompanying .tox file (use latest build 17760) and lots of great tips in there. Hopefully you find it helpful!

Cheers

Thanks for the tips on tutorial links and tox file… i was very dissapointed to be offed to buy a ebook by a forum member… your post restores my faith…

come on man :unamused:

What I am feeling, as I am a beginner currently learning, is that tutorials do way too much of what my math teachers used to do and sadly turned me off of math…They would usually just expect something to be understood.
So many, probably most tutorials will show you a workflow, but not explain why…“Now we put down the Evaluate DAT and we type in this expression”…What? Why? What is the evaluate DAT? And where did this expression come from? What is the underlying logic of putting that node there? “We need to extract the UV coordinates of this surface”…Sure, but why?
Of course this could be too beginner for some, but videos can be fast forwarded…Knowledge not so much.

I think, and I see this all the time with Houdini teachers, that people forget what needs to be explained and what is ok to assume know.

I would also like to request more information on setting up your environment. I can’t find any ressources on best practices to set up your folder structure, what Touch likes, what is good for this or that type of project etc…

Thanks
Alex

Hey Alex, we understand the learning curve is steep in TouchDesigner and are trying to make it easier any way we can, so you comments are welcome!

Have you been focusing on the Beginner tutorials first? They are the ones with the green circles. Also, make SURE you go through all 3 videos in the “First Thing to Know About TouchDesigner” tutorial, they are crucial for laying some groundwork. Any intermediate or advanced tutorial will make a lot of assumptions that you know your way around TouchDesigner, otherwise those more complex tutorials would be hours long.

I would also recommend looking at the CHOP, TOP, and SOP main pages. They have very quick videos for all of the commonly used “sweet 16” operators in each family. They are an introduction to those OPs at the most basic level and show you a couple of things you can do with each one.

derivative.ca/wiki077/index. … gory:CHOPs
derivative.ca/wiki077/index. … egory:TOPs
derivative.ca/wiki077/index. … egory:SOPs

Please feel free to ask any question here on the forum, and questions with an example from say a file or tutorial video are great.

We are also starting to do workshops at Derivative, the first of which will be aimed at novice users. We have 2 planned for Los Angeles in April right now, and we will plan more in the future based on interest in different areas.

derivative.ca/education/work … elesApril/

i feel that there is not enough general information attached to the chop or node help pages or even int he tutorial area… for instance a simple link this is a background on typical instruments and uses of the audio frequency spectrum should be attached a a help or external link in the audio nodes such as the band EQ node

teachmeaudio.com/production/ … o-spectrum

I think that what we are missing as a community is a link (and distinction) between how to use touch and how to do the things touch is used for.

because the latter is diverse, one can be a veteran in one are and not in another.

For example, I just did a commercial job where I had to use a lot of video in a corporate tradeshow exhibit. Even though I know a bit about Touch in 3D and other stuff. working with video put me at beginners level again. this is something I’ll try to talk about in its own post but I think we need more links out to more general knowledge.

Potentially, touch’s ‘viewer-in-tile’ interface makes it a perfect tool from which to explore computer graphics. I’d love to see some more tutes about lighting, materials etc. in a more general sense. Often the assumption is that we know this stuff and just need to learn how to do it in touch.

Rod.

an

Hey Ben

Thanks for your reply…I have been away from Touch for almost a month due to new projects, but am diving right back in now.
I had indeed looked the beginner tutorials first and I think I will watch them again to be on the safe side.

One other suggestion I would make is something like “The anatomy of a touch project”.
For example I don’t recall seeing in any video a clear explanation of what the hierarchy of a project is, starting with “/”, then “/project1”, etc…

I am also struggling with a clear understanding of the workflow with FBX geometry and UV coordinates etc…I will definitely post specific questions as they come up

Thanks again
Alex

ok here is one big difficult thing for beginners. the online or inline help for SOPS etc is very basic. its pretty much self evident stuff. there seems to be no elaboartion on “what happens if”

for instance

derivative.ca/wiki077/index. … Switch_SOP

the switch sop. great iput counts up the next element in the switch list is selected. but what happens if the input becomes greater than the number of INPUT OP’s… no idea. really my life is too short to have to figure this out myself. why cant it just say " for inputs greater than the number of INPUT OPS the selection will be invalid/or will LOOP"… just so i know … pleeeease…

Being quite new to Touch Designer, but quite experimented in programming (java based langagues) and in dataflow software like max/msp/jitter, I am currently struggling in simply drawing in 2D :confused:

I would like to take output of a trail and “redraw” it… Like making a custom trail, using my own aesthetic for the line it draw.

Hi Ombossa maybe best to post in Beginners Questions rather than here…
wish i coud help you with your actual question but im a noob as well… :stuck_out_tongue:

Hi Guys,

Sorry but im still finding inline help very inadequate.
for instance DAT’s im dealing with DAT tables and none of the help pages for TBL node or general DAT help tells me about the built in variablesyou might expect like ‘number of rows’ and ‘number of columns’. i would expect these built in constants to be included in each DAT node help as well as the general DAT group page…

ps if any one know what these constants are a hint would be great! thanks!

yeah, half the trouble is figuring out what things are called.

if you look for ‘variables’ rather than constants, things might start to make sense…

derivative.ca/wiki077/index. … =Variables

but also you will need to use expressions to get info about DATs.
try typing in the textport:

             [i]  exhelp tab*[/i]

that should give you just about every expression that can get info about a table and its contents.

also, there are some variable-related expressions for more complex scripts that might end up pasted in different paths etc. and need to know if the variables they are looking for make sense in relation to their new location…

             [i]  exhelp var*[/i]

I agree that the help wiki pages for individual ops should each link back to this stuff so it becomes possible to find the right info from a number of directions.

early on, we were all putting stuff into the wiki entries but Derivative folk (rightly I think) wanted to keep that stuff fairly clear and consistent so having everyone scribbling away might’ve been too messy. However, it might be good to suggest stuff like this in the RFE and wishlist forum:

               [viewforum.php?f=17](http://www.derivative.ca/Forum/viewforum.php?f=17)

or, if it’s a glaring logical failure in the documentation, bugs:

               [viewforum.php?f=12](http://www.derivative.ca/Forum/viewforum.php?f=12)

maybe we should start putting stuff in the discussion tab of a wiki page?

Rod.

Thanks Rob, thanks for the explanation and some Good points there…