203 – CHOPs & Intermediate Signal Manipulation

Time, Events, and Data 

Summary

Many of the projects we create with TouchDesigner often need to consider the use of Time. In some situations, that may look like driving animation sequences with time, but it might also look like tracking user interaction, creating timeouts, or managing the state of an interactive experience. State is often a critical component when creating interactive projects and experiences. We borrow the idea of state from computer science, and often use this idea to describe the operating conditions of our project. We might think of state as a snapshot of conditions in our project. For example, if we’re rendering a 3D scene we may use state as a way to think about several different camera positions: both holding onto those locations and moving between them. We can think of these ideas as being synonymous with concepts like presets and cues. 

In many projects, it’s critical to both consider a collection of states, and how we can sequence them. While it may be tempting to think of these two ideas as being tangled together, in this lesson we’ll work to look at these ideas separately to ensure we have a deep understanding of each and how they can work together.

Prerequisites

101 – Navigating the Environment

Difficulty

Intermediate

Viewing Recommendation

Watch, Follow Along

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