CPlusPlus TOP

Summary

The CPlusPlus TOP is only available in TouchDesigner Pro and FTE Commercial.

This TOP allows you to write your own .dll using C++ to do custom operators. See the articles in the C++ Category for more detailed information on how to make .dll for use with this node.

Parameters - Load Page

DLL Path dll - The path to the DLL you want to load.

Re-init Class reinit - When this parameter goes above 1, it will delete the instance of the class created by the .dll, and create a new one.

Unload DLL unloaddll - When this parameter goes above 1, it will delete the instance of the class created by the .dll and unload the .dll. If multiple TOPs have loaded the same .dll they will all need to unload it to release the file.

Anti-Alias antialias - The level of anti-aliasing you want the framebuffer that will be created for you to have.

Depth Buffer depthbuffer - Specifies the pixel format if the depth buffer you want, if any.

Stencil Buffers stencilbuffer - Turn on if you want a stencil buffer.

# of Color Buffers numcolorbufs - Any shader you write can output to more than one RGBA buffer at a time. Instead of writing to gl_FragColor in your shader, you write to gl_FragData[i] where i is the color buffer index you want to write the value to.

Parameters - Floats Page

This page allows you to provide float values which will be passed into the .dll.

Values val0v - Specify up to 4 values per parameter.

There are 10 parameter on this page with internal names val0v to val9v.

Parameters - CHOPs Page

CHOP /chop0 - Specify a CHOP whose channels will be passed into the .dll

There are 10 parameters on this page with internal names chop0 to chop9.

DAT Table of CHOPs /chopinputs - Use a DAT table to hold a list of CHOPs whose channels will be passed into the .dll

Parameters - Strings Page

String string0 - Specify a string that will be passed into the .dll.

There are 10 parameters on this page with internal names string0 to string9.

Parameters - Common Page

Resolution - quickly change the resolution of the TOP's data.

• Input - uses the input's resolution.
• Eighth, Quarter, Half, 2X, 4X, 8X - multiply the input's resolution by that amount.
• Custom Resolution - enables the Custom Res parameter below, giving direct control over res in the X and Y axis.

Custom Res - enabled only when the Resolution parameter is set to Custom Resolution. Some Generators like Constant and Ramp do not use inputs and only use this field to determine their size. The drop down menu on the right provides some commonly used resolutions.

Use Global Resolution Multiplier - Uses the Global Resolution Multiplier found in Edit>Preferences>TOPs. This multiplies all the TOPs resolutions by the set amount. This is handy when working on computers with different hardware specifications. If a project is designed on a desktop workstation with lots of graphics memory, a user on a laptop with only 64MB VRAM can set the Global Resolution Multiplier to a value of half or quarter so it runs at an acceptable speed. By checking this checkbox on, this TOP is affected by the global multiplier.

Aspect Ratio - sets the image aspect ratio allowing any textures to be viewed in any size. Watch for unexpected results when compositing TOPs with different aspect ratios.

• Input - uses the input's aspect ratio.
• Resolution - uses the aspect of the image's defined resolution (ie 512x256 would be 2:1), whereby each pixel is square.
• Custom Aspect Ratio - lets you explicitly define a custom aspect ratio.

Fill Viewer - determine how the TOP image is displayed in the viewer.

• Input - uses the same Fill Viewer settings as it's input.
• Fill - stretches the image to fit the edges of the viewer.
• Fit Horizontal - stretches image to fit viewer horizontally.
• Fit Vertical - stretches image to fit viewer vertically.
• Fit Best - stretches or squashes image so no part of image is cropped.
• Fit Worst - stretches or squashes image so image fills viewer while constraining it's proportions. This often leads to part of image getting cropped by viewer.
• Native Resolution - displays the native resolution of the image in the viewer.

NOTE: To get an understanding of how TOPs works with images, you will want to set this to Native Resolution as you lay down TOPs when starting out. This will let you see what is actually happening without any automatic viewer resizing.

Viewer Smoothness - This controls pixel filtering in the viewers.

• Nearest Pixel - uses nearest pixel or accurate image representation. Images will look jaggy when viewing at any zoom level other than Native Resolution.
• Interpolate Pixels - uses linear filtering between pixels. This is how you get TOP images in viewers to look good at various zoom levels, especially useful when using any Fill Viewer setting other than Native Resolution.
• Mipmap Pixels - uses mipmapfiltering when scaling images. This can be used to reduce artifacts and sparkling in moving/scaling images that have lots of detail. When the input is 32-bit float format nearest filtering will always be used, regardless of what is selected in the menu.

Pixel Format - format used to store data for each channel in the image (ie. R, G, B, and A). Refer to Pixel Formats for more information.

• Input - uses the input's pixel format.
• 8-bit fixed (RGBA) - uses 8-bit integer values for each channel.
• 16-bit float (RGBA) - uses 16-bits per color channel, 64-bits per pixel.
• 32-bit float (RGBA) - uses 32-bits per color channel, 128-bits per pixels.

• 10-bit RGB, 2-bit Alpha, fixed (RGBA) - uses 10-bits per color channel and 2-bits for alpha, 32-bits total per pixel.
• 16-bit fixed (RGBA) - uses 16-bits per color channel, 64-bits total per pixel.
• 11-bit float (RGB), Positive Values Only - A RGB floating point format that has 11 bits for the Red and Green channels, and 10-bits for the Blue Channel, 32-bits total per pixel (therefore the same memory usage as 8-bit RGBA). The Alpha channel in this format will always be 1. Values can go above one, but can't be negative. ie. the range is [0, infinite).
• 8-bit fixed (R) - has 8-bits for the red channel, 8-bits total per pixel.
• 16-bit fixed (R) - has 16-bits for the red channel, 16-bits total per pixel.
• 16-bit float (R) - has 16-bits for the red channel, 16-bits per pixel.
• 32-bit float (R) - has 32-bits for the red channel, 32-bits per pixel.
• 8-bit fixed (RG) - has 8-bits for the red and green channels, 16-bits total per pixel.
• 16-bit fixed (RG) - has 16-bits for the red and green channels, 32-bits total per pixel.
• 16-bit float (RG) - has 16-bits for the red and green channels, 32-bits per pixel.
• 32-bit float (RG) - has 32-bits for the red and green channels, 64-bits per pixel.
• 8-bit fixed (A) - An Alpha only format that has 8-bits per channel, 8-bits per pixel.
• 16-bit float (A) - An Alpha only format that has 16-bits per channel, 16-bits per pixel.
• 32-bit float (A) - An Alpha only format that has 32-bits per channel, 32-bits per pixel.