Free + Open Source TouchDesigner book

Shout out to elburz and his fabulous book

: )

I’ve found this book amazing helpful, I have one question,
you state that having a deep understanding of computer graphics and rendering helps.
is there any material you could recommend for for beginning the epic journey into the world of computer graphics and rendering processes?

Computer graphics and rendering is quite a bear and might be something that you may want to digest in pieces as you’re working through learning TouchDesigner, otherwise it can be a whole maze to learn itself.

If you wanted to learn about computer graphics on their own separate from TouchDesigner, you can google “introduction to computer graphics”, looks like there are many university course materials you can check out. A lot of people recommend this udacity course:

udacity.com/course/interact … ics–cs291

But i remember it getting quickly math-y for me. Definitely worth a shot though as it will basically teach you GLSL in parallel, and it’s quite comprehensive.

But don’t be afraid to just read Wikipedia or something from OpenGL’s wiki (since TouchDesigner is made with OpenGL) about what you’re working on.

Like if you’re working on rendering and curious about what a phong material is:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phong_shading
developer.valvesoftware.com/wik … _materials

Or if you’re working with geometry and wondering what steps happen between your SOP and the Render TOP:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics_pipeline
opengl.org/wiki/Rendering_Pipeline_Overview

Or if you’re working on trying to make feedback trails you can learn different ways of approaching it by reading things on stack exchange:
gamedev.stackexchange.com/questi … ail-effect

The above is what worked for me, since I didn’t want to steer away from learning TouchDesigner just to learn graphics while I was working on projects, and it was a bit easier to digest little chunks at a time. Asking questions is good too!

thanks heaps or your advice :slight_smile:

Thanks for your time putting this together!

Could cover your book in 3 days and go thru the examples.
I had many tries with TD, now finally with a decent computer and your book I feel enthusiastic about it!

Leo

No problem, it’s still growing slowly! More to come.

Enjoy!

We’ve just finished transitioning the book to using GitBook. Some of the benefits:

  • Uses Markdown instead of LaTeX, so should be easier for people to add/update it
  • Because of Markdown, no LaTex build environment needed, just updating the Markdown files on the repo and GitBook handles recompiling everything.
  • GitBook has a web readable version of the book that works on desktop and mobile
  • GitBook not only creates a PDF, but also ePub and Mobi version of the book for e-readers and iPads

There’s some more things we’ll update to make for a better experience, like making the graphic elements a bit more friendly for printing and e-readers, etc etc.

Can still access via book.nvoid.com

Direct link:
[url]GitBook - Where technical teams document.

Amazing - thank you! As a total n00b who just installed TD, this will be very helpful!

Welcome to the community andrejones! This book is great, enjoy.

Great, thanks! I’ll dig in :slight_smile:

Is this book available in another format? I’m allergic to LaTex.

if you go to the link posted above: gitbook.com/book/nvoid/intr … er/details
there is a button top-right “Download as PDF/ePub/Mobi”

The first post is a bit old now, so we’re not using latex anymore. It’s all in markdown and a service called GitBooks renders the markdown into a web readable version, pdf, epub, mobi, etc.

If you go to nettoyeur’s link there’s different reading options there.

Hey elburz,

I just would like to say thanks for this book! I’ve created my account here only to say thank you very much!

I’m from Brazil and I was looking for good info about TouchDesign. I hope you get always the best!

Thank you very much!

Thanks! :smiley:

Glad it helps!

Hello elburz,

I never saw this Book before. Thanks for sharing your content!

You deserve the best,
Rafael Querido

Hi all !
It’s well written and makes it easy to understand the workflow in TD. Already half way through this book, can’t wait to put some of the concepts into практике. Thank you very much!

Thank you! Consider contributing to the book on Github or making your own tutorials for other users. Every little bit helps.

I am a TouchDesign beginner, so this book does help me a lot.
It has been written in detail that easy to follow
Thanks Nvoid for sharing.