Kinect with TouchDesigner + Mac

Hey everyone!

I’m trying to buy a Kinect to use with TouchDesigner but I’m having difficulty figuring out which version/model I should be going for.

The other hurdle is that I am using a Mac, which I know has limited access to the Kinect’s functionality.

Does anyone have any suggestions on which model would suit me best? Or can at least point me in the direction of some good resources on the matter of linking a Kinect to TouchDesigner on a Mac? Extremely new here so please forgive me if the answers are obvious.

Thank you in advance!

Microsoft has not made any Kinect drivers for Mac, so Kinect in Mac is not supported (=not working) in TouchDesigner. You best best is to install Bootcamp and boot to a full Windows environment on your mac.

Furthermore Kinect 1 & 2 are not produced anymore, so your only option is to buy a second hand Kinect2 on something like ebay, and make sure you also buy an adapter to connect it to a PC (you can get some china-made cheap ones online which work fine) . And the new coming version Kinect Azure, for which you can only buy a developers kit currently, is not yet supported by TD.

Thanks for the info!

That’s what I was mostly trying to discern - whether there was any major difference between the Kinect 1 and 2. Where I am in Vietnam, if buying locally, the Kinect 1 (Xbox 360) is significantly cheaper second-hand. Are there any major reasons I would choose the version 2 (Xbox One) over the the 1?

I will also look at installing Bootcamp and Windows onto my machine. Otherwise, my limited understanding of other posts I’ve found has told me that I can “siphon” Kinect data to TouchDesigner via other programs like Processing - all on my Mac. Is this correct?

Im on the same journey actually. Bootcamp from my research also seems like the best option. If you have not already found out about Syphon. It is basically just a way to pass video in realtime between applications. It is free and works extremely well. It is also supported by pretty all major mac compatible audiovisual applications. That said I am also very curious about the Kinect azure and how that differs from Kinect 2 and the Intel Realsense cameras. My impression is that it is worth spending the extra money and getting a second gen Kinect supposedly its tracking is 3 times tighter. However, I am not yet sure about how it compares to the realsense cameras. My impression on the intel cameras though is that the most recent models are not well supported in the TD enviroment. Wish you luck on this journey though! I am also just getting started with touch and motion tracking!

Hi, which one did you bye at the end the kinect 1 or 2?

Hi Guys,

I’m a MAC user with Kinect2 and a fresh beginner to the software. Have one simple question.
Do I need to install any other drivers aside from Bootcamp to make Kinect2 work in Touch Designer? or when I run windows environment in my mac, open up TD and connect the Kinect2 and boom is it that easy?

Thank you.

Hello,
You need to install the Microsoft Kinect SDK, 1.8 for K1, 2.0 for K2.
Kinect Azure are working directly with Kinect Azure Top
The difference between K1 and K2 is mainly definition of color image and depth image (better on K2), more player, better skeleton and point cloud on K2.
But only one K2/computer (plural with K1 and K Azure)

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One nice thing about Kinect V1 (recommend the Kinect for Windows model as specified here: Kinect1) is you can use multiple Kinects per computer while the V2 is only 1 per computer. On the other hand the V2 is much better quality data and tracking.

Any thoughts on using a virtual machine with the Windows SKDs & drivers, and sending the data over to Touchdesinger on the mac?

If so, how would one go about doing that? Websockets? Two instances of TD communicating with one another?

Would love to figure out an easy solution to this. I was just gifted two Kinects V2, and would love to put them to use.

Hello, Virtual machine (parallel or VM) are not working with TD, for reasons linked to graphic card communication. One solution is to have a separate window machine (real one or bootcamp) sending OSC to MacOs machine, it works with skeleton. For deep map, you can pack the 16 bits monochrome image in 8 bit color and send it though NDI, For point cloud its more difficult, 32 bits RGBA image…

New NDI 4.1 in 2020 builds supports 16bit, however NDI is lossy so you will get data degradation. Touch In and Touch Out TOPs offer uncompressed transfer, but this is very heavy.

Hello,

Can you use multiple Kinect Azures per computer within TouchDesigner for skeletal tracking? The documentation states “Only one Kinect Azure TOP can be connected to a single Kinect camera.” Am I correct in thinking that as long as I have a Kinect Azure TOP for each Kinect Azure camera, I can have multiple Kinect Azure TOPs with multiple Kinect Azure cameras feeding in data?

Yes, you can use multiple Kinect Azures per computer, you need a Kinect Azure TOP for each Kinect Azure you have.

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Hello
What I could do so far is to read Kinect’s pointcloud via Processing software and sending it through Syphon to Touch.
I uploaded the Processing sketch here:

As i’m using also Ableton connected to Touch, is not a great deal for me to, besides touch, install ableton and all my plugins, vst etc. in a bootcamp’s windows or something like that,

Of course that regarding to Kinect data control is not as easy as using the built in / Microsoft only chop, but at least you can have the point cloud inside Touch with Osx
Maybe you’ll need to become a little bit familiar with Processing, but as it is now, it should work.
Also you’ll need to install Processing, the Kinect and syphon libraries: org.openkinect.freenect.;
org.openkinect.processing.
;
codeanticode.syphon.*;
In the near future i’ll try to make a processing sketch that also sends the Skelleton data Via OSC among with the point cloud, so we can also receive that in touch or wherever we want, in a single program, and I think that for many projects will be enaugh, so hopefully soon i’ll be uploading this programs to the github folder above
i hope it works for somewone

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