FragTool

Just uploaded a new version with a few fixes and improvements.

I’ve added a few notes to the bottom of the first post.

cheers
Keith

Now the fun begins ! Got it now, thanks so much…

Wow, just seeing this for the first time now. Thanks so much for sharing this, Keith!

Getting 30 - 60fps on my 970ti. Great stuff Kieth this is an amazing piece of art / expression.

Thanks guys.

Btw it looks like it’s a bit broken in the new experimental builds >40000 . I’ll post a fixed version soon.

cheers
Keith

Finally got a chance to play with this on a decent computer. Awesome stuff mate!

Wow, this looks like a totally powerful tool!

I started exploring fractal stuff beginning of 2015. Disappointed with built software for fractals visualization I quickly moved to GLSL and wandered across a range of tools including Fragmentarium and Synthclipse. These are great tools but always limiting in what I wanna achieve.

Looks like moving to Touch and starting with FragTool is the beginning of a new chapter.
Particulary given that I wanted to move to more real-time stuff integrated with external sensors/inputs.

Motivated to learn.

Dear all,

I am learning how to use Fragtool, and would like to use my MIDI controller (Novation Launchcontrol XL) to modulate the parameters of this amazing Fragtool system. Could anyone explain to me or help me find out how to map a midi controller signal to any formula in the perform-mode of the Fragtool UI, so I can modulate parameters by twisting knowbs on my midi-controller?

Thank you so much and I hope to hear from you guys!

Fred

Hi Fred, it’s not setup but there are a couple of methods you can use.

In /FragTool/Anim_LFOs_Mods/ are a number of animation components for each parameter group (formula, camera etc.). If you insert an override in front of the CHOP labelled “out” in any of these sections you can override a parameter. This will work but you might find you’ll have a number of problems if you want to switch formulas - parameters that you had mapped may not exist anymore.

The best way to get midi controllers in would be to setup a number of controllers as modulation sources.

In /FragTool/Anim_LFOs_Mods/allModRouting you’ll need to update a table called “AllMods” with the channel names of the midi channels you want to map. Then in the same container merge your midi channels into the CHOP labeled “mods”

Now your midi channels will show up as mod sources in the Mod Matrix Source menus and you’ll be able to route the to any parameter. When a global preset is stored it will save the routing.

Hi Keith, first great work and thank you for sharing.

As a newb, please forgive my ignorance, but did you ever end up posting any docs or videos on how to use the great FragTool? I haven’t been able to find anything.

So far, i’m just trying to move the camera, set some keys and see some animation…

any help appreciated!

-j

jsunandmax, OK, first, I’m a noob. Been into Touchdesigner < 1day. Here ONLY because of discovering Fragtool yesterday, which may be the realization of a 20 year dream if I can get my head around it. For the benefit of other noobs (and you, if you haven’t figure this out), a couple of preliminaries:

  1. The Fragtool UI wants a 1920x806 monitor. Less than that and the parts of the ui you need for animation are truncated off the right edge. Do this:
    Open the .toe file in TD.
    Hit ESC to enter Edit Mode.
    Hit the ‘U’ key to move to top of the object hierarchy.
    Click the Win module to highlight it.
    On the right you’ll see the parameters (Window/Extension/Common tabs).
    On the Window tab, from the Size dropdown, select custom and set your display resolution. Hit the F1 key to return to Performance Mode.
    On my system (1600x1200), I now see the missing panels on the right side.

  2. I needed to set my audio device:
    ESC to return to Edit Mode.
    ‘U’ key to get to top of hierarchy. if you aren’t there.
    Select the large ‘FragTool’ container in the center of the screen. Hit the ‘i’ key to enter it.
    Select the ‘Anim_LFOs_Mods’ base on the lower right. Hit the ‘i’ key to enter it.
    Select the larger Audio container at the left of the screen. Hit the ‘i’ key to enter it.
    Select the audioout CHOP on the right.
    In it’s Parameters, select your correct Driver & Device from the dropdowns.

IMPORTANT! If you are using a crappy, stock audio interface (i.e. non-ASIO), you WILL need to increase the buffer size. This WILL increase latency and may result in a delay between graphics/sound. Start w/ .600 on the Buffer Length, if you get no sound later, come back to this step & increase. Now set the ‘Active’ switch to ‘On’. Don’t touch anything else for now.
‘F1’ to return to Performance Mode

  1. Now you’re ready to make it do something :slight_smile:.
    Spacebar toggles timeline play. Make sure it’s running.
    Click the ModMatrix radio button on the extreme right of the ui, about an inch down from the top on a 21" monitor. This is where good stuff happens. There’s a Mod1Gain slider near the top of the left column in this pane. Move it just a touch to the right. On my system, the fractal is now animating a little, to the beat of LFO1, which is the default source for this modulator, just above the slider.

  2. Let’s try some audio:
    Click the ‘Open Audio’ button on the top right, under the FragTool text.
    May need to click it twice, mines a little flaky. Opens a dialog.
    Open up a windows explorer containing a music .wav file. MP3, etc won’t work. Drag that wave file into TD, right on to that text bar with the tiny writing directly above the waveform display in the dialog you just opened. Crank up the Monitor Source slider to 1. You should see the wave display active. If you bring up the Monitor Volume slider, you should hear music. If not, you may need to increase that buffer.

Go back to the ModMatrix on the right. In the top left modulation source, ‘Mod1’, select Audio1 from the dropdown. Your fractal should be doing something musical at this point.
Play around with the ‘Dest’ dropdown just to the right. A lot of these choices don’t seem to do anything, others are drastic.

HAVE FUN :wink:

Now you know what I know. I hope you guys will post cool stuff here as you discover it. It might be up to us to document this thing.

Be certain that Keith has given us something beyond amazing here. I’ve popped the hood, and this thing is scary complex inside. The possibilities of customization & tweaking are endless. This is literally the tool that some of us have been dreaming of since we did our first Mandelbrot zoom on an 8-bit computer 30 years ago. As for me, I’m buying a faster video card on Friday, lol. But right now I’m gonna go buy myself a beer :wink:

1 Like

*********************** EDIT **************************
The issue described below is resolved by uninstalling the current TD and re-installing v088.32840

Thanks Keith! :slight_smile:


If anyone besides myself is playing with Fragtool, or would be willing to spend 10 minutes verifying something for me, please try this:

Load the .toe from the first post in this thread. Note that on the left, the Formula tab is selected by default. The current formula is ‘TryptaIFSMulti’. There are about 33 formula paramters listed in my install.

Go to the formula dropdown at the top of that list.

Select any other formula, but for example, I used the one at the top of the list ‘CornerMenger’.

Now there are only 15 formula parameters.

Go back and select ‘TryptaIFSMulti’ again from the dropdown list. Now there are only 17 paramaters displayed. The only way I can get the entire 33 params back on my install is a reload of TD.

I can’t imagine this is the designed behavior, since those parameters are critical to do anything original w/ this.

Thanks for any help.

Hi ForestCat. Please install teh last Touch build before build 40000. This should alleviate your problems. I plan on doing a major upgrade but it probably won’t be posted for a bit.

I was also thinking of doing a live tutorial if anyone is interested. If so let me know and I get start to organize a time.

cheers
Keith

That fixed it. I edited my post. Thank you! re: tutorial, sign me up :wink: Anybody else?

Keith, one thing: Is there functionality within the ui somewhere to direct the render window output to another monitor? If not is it simply a matter of finding the right component and adding a window component to it? If so, could you provide the path to the right component? This ui is deeeeeeeeep, lol. I know you’ve got some scaling/res stuff going on, I wasn’t able to find the right thing to send to a window.
Thanks!

You’ve put a lot of thought into your structure and a little insight to your project would be very helpful.

Sign me up for a live tutorial!


Brian

Has anyone figure out the keyframe animation? I can create an envelope for, say, ‘RotateY’ in the keyframe grid. I can add/edit the keyframes/change the shape of the green automation envelope. But when the timeline runs, it has no effect of the object itself. I can rotate it in realtime with the RotateY slider at 60fps, so that’s working. Anyone else try the keyframes?
Thanks.

P.S. Wonder if Keith would consider releasing the unfinished tutorial video he made & let us fight our way through it for now? It would be enormously helpful to see the ui put through its paces, just to see how it is supposed to work.

EDIT: Just noticed that there is a pre-existing ‘Light’ keyframe automation in the default preset, controlling the SpotlightGain param. When I run the timeline, I see no change in the spotlight gain. Should I? If so, something might be broken…

OK, through sheer stubbornness, made some progress on the keyframe animation:

If you load FragTool, stop the timeline with the spacebar, and immediately click the ‘Light’ tab below the left parameter panel, the keyframe editor/grid opens.
In the upper left corner of the grid itself are two grey flags, labeled ‘0’ and ‘1’.

These appear to define the animation range, in frames, which by default is none(well, one frame, almost none, lol). So that nice pink envelope to the right is ignored. Grab the left-pointing ‘0’ flag with the mouse and drag it to the right, to around frame 1000.

If you now select the ‘Light’ tab above the left parameter panel and click the small ‘k’ to the right of the ‘SpotLightGain’ slider to enable automation for that parameter, you will now see that parameter affecting the scene lighting when you run the timeline. Sweet!

Success!! OMG, this thing is SO freaking cool. Keith, you’re a God…

This will be great!

And I’m also can’t find the solution for windowed output.

Is there any way to render only an image? I presume this option will be limited by TD’s resolution with the free version…