Hou2Touch Weekly #1

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We starting to post the video lessons about the most mystic and underrated TouchDesigner Operator Family - SOPs aka Surface Operators

We need always remember, that TouchDesigner was build on the 3D Engine, and in order to be a PRO its better to understand the power of SOP Context

In this free series we going to uncover the SOP usage in structured way:
Speaking about the Generators, Deformers,
Workflow Utilities, Modeling operators

In the first video we speak about different ways to convert data from other contexts to SOP

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On September 26, we will hold an artist talk with Vadim Epstein - Media Artist, Director, Educator, Coder, VJ

A year ago, as part of the Person in Touch stream series, we organized an online stream with Vadim Epstein, showcasing his approach for creating neurographics and his art works.

A year later, we're hosting another artist talk, where we present a new course called AI/ML in Visuals, which we're launching in collaboration with Vadim.

On this stream, you'll hear the course insights, learn about its program, see our advances in integrating TouchDesigner and Stable Diffusion, and also be able to ask questions.

You can view the syllabus for AI/ML in Visuals course now here

Also we highly recommend checking out Vadim's approach with the artworks on vimeo and website

One example of his AI/ML-based pieces was (probably the world's first) neuro-videomapping in august 2018 in Lille, France.

Enjoy!

Projection opus for videomapping contest in Lille (got Jury Special Mention).
An experimental CG piece reflecting the everlasting flux of Time that grinds and blends everything down to fine sand. Produced with Deep Learning neural net.

Few dozens of key pictures have been picked as imprints of the human history, varying from archaic drawings and cuneiform to Picasso and modern photography. A neural net was selected as a mean to process this imagery on all levels up to the very atomic. It was seen quite symbolic and in line with the concept to let AI recycle the content instead of applying usual artistic manipulations.

Processed frames were fed again to Neural Net in feedback loops to reproduce impact of time and to create organic flow. Eventually the process washed out the original features, leaving only meditative flame streaming upon the ancient architecture of the building.
No other edits/VFX were used for the work.

Music: Archon Orchestra 'Eluding'

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In this tutorial we will learn how to control the behavior of nodes in the Network Editor of TouchDesigner using Python scripts

- What??? 

- Yes! I am sure that most people could not even imagine that this was possible.

If you want to see an audiovisual show using only TouchDesigner UI elements, watch the video by Alva Noto

This performance played an important role in popularizing TouchDesigner at the time: