Creating Topography-Inspired Structures in TouchDesigner

Get access to 200+ hours of TouchDesigner video training, a private Facebook group where Elburz Sorkhabi and Matthew Ragan answer all your questions, and twice-monthly group coaching/mastermind calls here: iihq.tv/Trial
Get project files here: interactiveimmersive.ac-page....
Nature and natural forms have a long history of inspiring artists and designers alike. Topographic maps, which illustrate elevation levels of terrain, create some very interesting abstract organic shapes when viewed from an artistic/aesthetic standpoint. When translated into three dimensions, the resulting structures are very sculptural, featuring a cool organic, minimalist aesthetic that we thought would be fun to replicate in TouchDesigner!
In this video, Jack DiLaura walks you through creating three dimensional structures in TouchDesigner inspired by 3D topographical maps. You’ll work with the Noise TOP to create textures reminiscent of these maps, map different textures to each instance of geometry with a 2D texture array, look at some post-processing techniques for finessing the final output, and more!
Chapters:
00:00:00 - Building a Topographic Map in TouchDesigner: Set Up
00:04:06 - Setting up Camera Viewport COMP
00:07:48 - Setting Up Animation Operators
00:12:03 - Adjusting the Channel Page
00:15:37 - Adding Color to the Constant Texture
00:20:22 - Setting up the Color Map
00:24:41 - Applying textures to the model
00:29:20 - Adding Realism to the Shadows
00:33:17 - Adjusting Render Settings to Reduce Artifacting
00:36:41 - More TouchDesigner and Immersive Content

[@paxk.8624]

Thanks so much for this tutorial and the tiny details, which make the difference. It was fun following your instructions, which are very good to follow 🙏

[@TheInteractiveImmersiveHQ]

Thanks for the feedback, glad to hear you found it helpful! Cheers :)

[@papacci20]

No way I thought of making something EXACTLY like this a while ago, thanks a lot for making a tutorial about it!

[@TheInteractiveImmersiveHQ]

Hah great minds think alike! Anytime, hope you enjoyed it 🙂

[@NGR]

great tutorial, you're good with the instructions and the worlkflow!

[@TheInteractiveImmersiveHQ]

Much appreciated! Thanks for watching :)

[@suleymanyilmaz9993]

Thank you sou much for your effort, i have really learned lots of fancy trick with this one. You are the best guys

[@TheInteractiveImmersiveHQ]

So glad to hear it! Thanks for watching :)

[@jibberish666]

Wow. That’s a lot of left-field operators for me. Very interesting approach and nicely done. Thanks :-)

[@TheInteractiveImmersiveHQ]

Thanks so much, glad you enjoyed it! Cheers :)

[@lee_sung_studio]

Thank you. 감사합니다.

[@TheInteractiveImmersiveHQ]

Our pleasure! :)

[@stopselei7758]

Great tutorial and smart use of the texture cache! I wonder if there's a way to do it without instancing but staying in SOP to be able to use the geometry further. Do you have any thought/hint on this?

[@TheInteractiveImmersiveHQ]

Thanks! :) This is probably possible to achieve with the Script SOP, but would likely take a bit of work with Noise functions and math to generate the geometry. Might also be worth checking into the Copy SOP and its stamping functionality, which could be used to create multiple layers that are slightly different from one another.

[@apofis_media]

Great tutorial, but I have a question, how can I animate the "surface" generated by the same noise?

[@TheInteractiveImmersiveHQ]

You might be able to approach this by replacing the 2D texture array with multiple instances of the Noise TOP, each with their own Threshold TOP set to a different value (or manipulated in a different way to differentiate them), and then using instance texturing (docs.derivative.ca/Geometry_COMP#Instance_Texturing) to assign an individual texture to each instance.
With multiple Noise TOPs you could modify each layer independently (as opposed to one Noise TOP into multiple Threshold TOPs). As the textures will be directly connected in realtime, instead of cached in the array, you'll be able to animate the parameters of the Noise TOPs directly and see the results. Hope this helps!

[@spridgejuice]

Thanks for the excellent tutorial as always. I'm curious about how to approach this without the initialisation based on frame numbers, so it could become audioreactive...

[@NGR]

Maybe you can use audio input into the number of points in the line sop.
I replaced the rectangle for a grid, and use the audio input into a noise amplitude attached to grid chop.

[@TheInteractiveImmersiveHQ]

Our pleasure! You might be able to approach this by using multiple instances of the Noise TOP, each with their own Threshold TOP set to a different value (or manipulated in a different way to differentiate them), and then using instance texturing (docs.derivative.ca/Geometry_COMP#Instance_Texturing) to assign an individual texture to each instance. Then, you could use the audio stream to manipulate some parameters of the Noise TOPs or other TOP-based effects to make it audio reactive. Hope that helps!

[@spridgejuice]

thanks, sounds like an interesting idea

[@spridgejuice]

thanks, I shall give that a go...