Derivative software on laptops

Hi,

I’m new to this forum, and also all new when it comes to visual art. I’m a big personal fan of the artists Frank Bretschneider, Alva Noto and other similar artists. I have been informed that they use Derivative Touch Designer as their main visual performing software.

I have been trying to install the demo version on my laptop, or both to be more precise. I have one Sony Vaio and one HP G62. The G62 is brand new, but touch designer won’t run?

I guess that the video card in my machines isn’t good enough to be running the software. The both mentioned artists above uses some version of Apple Macbook Pro, and as you all know - that’s laptops. Kinda strange that Touch Designer works without problems with their machines?

So, i was wondering if there’s any “lighter” version of Touch Designer for Windows PC’s?

Thanks!

HI Frames,

I think your HP has intel graphics which can not run touch without crashing (that may change in future but still true as of this date(meaning better intel graphics are in the pipeline but don’t hold your breath)).Here’s a good place to start for hardware info…
[url]http://www.derivative.ca/wiki/index.php?title=FAQ[/url]
[url]http://www.touch077.com/Downloads/[/url]

Touch uses a lot of stuff that you only find on the nvidia cards although some ATI cards can work (at least won’t crash at startup) but still not endorsed by the Derivative folk for reasons outlines in the above FAQ.

That said, touch version 017 will sometimes run on ATI and intel graphics and can do a lot. However, most of us are addicted to the lovely interface in 077 and have to be dragged screaming back to older versions. ( - - )

Rod.

Thanks for your answer!

I find it quite strange that Derivative haven’t developed Touch Designer for Mac OSX? the software runs great on the Macbook pro-laptops.

Oh, and another question.

If i want to perform my music live and wanted to use some VJ in the background, syncing my performance and so on. Wouldn’t i have to have two computers then? one for running my audio and another computer for running Touch Designer?

Because of all traveling it would be smartest to have laptops - Macbook pro’s. It’s kinda expensive with a computer from Apple, so i need to know if it’s “a must” to have two computers to make this possible?

Well, with that said i just realized that it’s very hard to have control over two laptops while performing the live session. All the MIDI-controllers need to be controlled, the music software must be controlled and all the other audio related stuff as well. And on top of that i need to have my eyes on the laptop controlling the VJ.

This sounds very complicated IMO. What do you say?

It is not absolutely necessary to have 2 computers for this, you could probably build a powerful enough desktop workstation to handle Ableton LIVE and TouchDesigner at the same time. However, if you are using laptops which don’t have the power of a workstation, then either LIVE or TouchDesigner will use most (if not all) of the laptop’s resources, so going to two machines may be required. Its all a matter of scale. If you are doing very minimal audio and lightweight visuals, you may be able to squeeze out enough performance from a very powerful laptop to do a show, but most of the time, you will want to add more to the show, add some complexity, go further with your ideas, and so forth, requiring more hardware in the end.

For TouchDesigner, you need to start with a laptop or desktop with an NVIDIA card. Then I would recommend trying some real world examples to see how much throughput you can get from your system.

Between laptops and desktops is the very small desktop box format such as the Shuttle. These are used by some Touch artistes for gigs. I personally went for a laptop on steroids (alienware m15x) because I don’t gig so often and I have to move around a lot (even inside our apartment).

I will probably eventually build a monster desktop (if I ever see money after becoming a student again!) out of not-quite-top-of-the-line components then overclock it a little. Then for the occasional gig, I’ll stick it all on a trolley and phone a taxi.

I used to have a medium-powered laptop with nvidia hardware that I used just for noodling around in touch to design control panels and try out little ideas then use a big desktop workstation to realise complete pieces for installation etc.

this time 'round I opted for a fairly extreme laptop that weighs a tonne and do my cafe surfing and writing on my phone.

Frames, you mentioned you had a sony vaio laptop. How does touch run on it? Am about to purchase a laptop and was looking at getting a Vaio.

Any other non mac book pro laptops that run touch well?

Thanks.

You do not need MacBook laptops to run TouchDesigner well, in fact, MacBooks usually are equipped with less powerful NVIDIA cards than are available in Windows Laptops at the same time, and Macbooks are more expensive!

The key is getting a laptop with an NVIDIA card, which does limit your choices somewhat, but this is the defining feature for a laptop running TouchDesigner.

Also, MacBooks with ATI cards will not run TouchDesigner any better than Windows-only laptops with ATI (we don’t recommend ATI at this point). MacBooks must be run in bootcamp mode to run TouchDesigner, at that point they are basically Windows machines.

Hope this helps…

Hi people,

I have just installed TD on my boot camp mac and the software looks really interesting.
Not being the only macintosh user playing around with this software, i am asking myself two questions:

When is a mac version coming and is it even planned?
 If there is a mac version, will the owner of a windows commercial version of Touch designer on boot camp will have to buy a license again to install it on their OSX system? or will this work as some kind of update, etc, etc,.. ?

Please refer to this post regarding Mac OSX.

viewtopic.php?f=27&t=3099

Hello reusetek,
Since the original post is so old I wanted to clarify the current situation. TouchDesigner 088 now runs on Intel graphics chips Intel HD4000 or higher, so almost all laptops from the last few years should be able to launch TouchDesigner.

However, the older Pavilion D6 you mention only has Intel HD3000 graphics, so it falls short of the minimum requirements for TouchDesigner.

8gb - 16gb is fine since TouchDesigner doesn’t store too much directly into CPU memory. If you’re on a budget, you might be better off maybe going 8gb RAM and getting a more powerful GPU with a higher amount of GPU memory.