Fifth Week in Electronics Media

The Fifth Week in Electronics Media has ended. This is what happened for this week of class:

On 2/4/25, we experimented with the new software, TouchDesigner. It began with the preparation of a breadboard circuit, as well as a serial write and a serial print code in the Arduino. Once the circuit and coding was set up, we connected the breadboard to the lab computers and opened TouchDesigner. Unfortunately though, I was not able to get as far compared to everybody else as I was stuck on the text TOP function and it was not working regardless of how much I fixed it. Though I did record a bit of notes which involved:

What is the difference between a Serial.write and a Serial.print

  • Serial.write sends bytes to the serial port
  • Serial.print sends ASCII characters 

For 2/6/25, I wasn't able to participate in class as I was not feeling well that day and had to unfortunately stay home.

To make up for my absence, on 2/8/25, I went through the 2 hour TouchDesigner tutorial provided on Canvas announcements. Here is some of the notes I was able to record:


What does the center bar tell us?
  • Tells the network we are currently working in
    • Nodes are in a hierarchical level and every node as a network path
      • Path: Location of an operator within a hierarchy of the project
        • Ex: "/" is an absolute path 
    • Home button sends you to real network





What is Perform Mode?
  • Presents the animation/output only and hides network UI















Additional Notes:
  • Bottom FPS: Desired FPS
  • Top FPS: Actual FPS
What is the Realtime Flag?
  • The mode used that prioritiss real-world time and in order to process complex functions, it will drop frames
    • When off: Will prioritize frames rendering instead
What do Operators (Nodes) do?
  • Generate data
  • Transform data
  • Has parameters that can be controlled
Types of TOPs:
  • Composite TOP: A multi-input TOP that will perform an operation for each input
  • Transform TOP: Applies 2D transformations to our TOP image
  • Noise TOP: Generates a variety of noise patterns including perlin, simpler, sparse, alligator, and random
  • Circle TOP: Creates circles
  • Ramp TOP: Creates gradient colors
  • Level TOP: Sets brightness, contrast, opacity, and gamma
  • Adjust TOP: Sets hue, saturation, and value
  • Crop TOP: Allows you to crop the TOP image
  • Tile TOP: Allows you to create copies of the image and separate them into squares
  • MovieFileIn TOP: Reflects and transforms image
  • Cross TOP: Transitions and blends images
  • Switch TOP: Transitions and blends inputs
  • Render TOP: Renders all 3D objects hen connected to lights, camera, and geometry
  • In TOP: Creates a TOP input in a component 

Type of CHOPs:
  • Math CHOP: Allows us to do mathematical operations between inputs of given multiple input or it can help us remap the range of our input
  • Beat CHOP: Generates a variety of ramps, pulses, and counters that are timed to beats per minute
  • LFO CHOP: Generates waves in real-time by synthesizing curves using a choice common waveforms like Sine or Pulse or it repeats a current wave
  • Timeline CHOP: Outputs time-based chop channels for a specific component 
  • Pattern CHOP: Generates a sequence of samples in a channel
  • Lag CHOP: Adds lag and overshoot to the channels
  • Filter CHOP: Smoothens or sharpens input channels
  • AudioFileIn CHOP: reads audio files from disk
  • AudioFileOut CHOP: outputs audio files
  • Spectrum CHOP: Calculates and displays the spectrum in a more understandable way by emphasizing the higher frequency levels and the lower frequency levels
  • Audio Analysis CHOP: Provides information about audio File
  • Shuffle CHOP: Useful for transforming data received by the SOP to CHOP and TOP to CHOP into channels containing only one row or column
    • Can be evenly manipulated then transformed back if needed
Type of COMPs:
  • Base COMP: Has no panel or 3D object parameters
    • Used with operator with no panel or 3D parameters
  • Light COMP: 3D objects that cast light onto 3D scene
  • Camera COMP: 3D object that acts like a camera
  • Slider COMP: Creates a slides that changes another nodes values
Types of SOPs:
  • Twist SOPs: Distorts 3D objects
  • Torus SOPs: Generates complete or specific sections of Torus shapes (like a doughnut)
  • Grip SOPs: Creates grids and rectangles using polygons a mesh, bzier, and NURBs surface or mutiple lines using polygons
  • Attribute SOPs: Allows users to create, modify, and delete attributes for points, reduces and primitves
  • Merge SOPs: Combines all 3D shapes
  • Super Quad Sops: 3D shapes that cannot be made from the Sphere SOPs
Types of MATs:
  • Phong MAT: Creates a material using Phong shading mod
Types of DATs:
  • Text DATS: Allows for free form text
    • Can also be used for scripting (Python)
  • ChopExec DAT: Run its script when the channel values of a specific chop is changed 

What are Points?
  • Directional vectors perpendicular to the side of the geometry connneted to the current point
What is Instancing?
  • A technique where we draw many objects at once with a single render wall, saving us all the  CPU -> GPU communications each time we need to render an object
    • Can recreate the same outcome by instancing TOPs, SOPs, and CHOPs.


This concludes the Week 5. Looking forward to next week.



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