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There are many ways we can think about sequencing events in TouchDesigner, and one of the most useful operators for this is the Timer CHOP. These examples cover how to sequence between multiple inputs, drive changes in a 3D scene, and display a loading animation while we wait for a remote asset to load from the internet.
We might initially think of a timer as a stopwatch whose values count either up or down. Though this is a great place to start when thinking about timers, we often need additional controls that let us think about time in sequence. For example, we may want to line up many time segments that run one right after another in sequence. Thinking of time this way is often useful when there’s animation or events in our network that have fixed durations and need to happen one after another.
Additionally, we may think of sequences that run at the same time (this is called Parallel Timers in the Timer CHOP’s ‘Segment Method‘ parameter). Parallel timers are often critical for sequences that start at the same time, but have different durations. This style of time management is often helpful when we need to think about events that begin at the same time, but end after different durations.
Another way we often use time is as a mechanism for checking on the status of other operations. We may, for example, want to check once a minute, once a second, or even once a frame to see if all of our required conditions for moving forward are met. Here we might think of time as the interval between looking to see if we’re ready to start the next event in our project.