Every TouchDesigner user has their own learning story: a workshop they attended, a set of tutorials they found online or a class they took in college. Once you’ve started using TouchDesigner, it’s often hard to stop because there’s always something new to learn with endless avenues of exploration. The flexibility and robustness of TouchDesigner can sometimes be daunting for new users — especially for those not used to a node-based nonlinear environment.
The TouchDesigner community has been infinitely resourceful, and the amount of community-made learning materials continues to grow each day. Resources like The Interactive and Immersive HQ, The Node Institute, and allTD.org, just to name a few, continue to introduce learners of all backgrounds to TouchDesigner. These resources help students explore artmaking techniques, do cutting edge research and prepare for work in industry. In order to better support the community, the TouchDesigner Curriculum was built to reinforce foundational concepts and techniques.
TouchDesigner Fundamentals
The 100 Series: TouchDesigner Fundamentals takes you through all the essential concepts you need for getting started with TouchDesigner. The course is broken into lessons that focus on core concepts: the TouchDesigner environment, the Operator Families plus additional resources and tips. Each topic includes a video that is 5-8 minutes long, a written overview with references, and an example component that you can load into TouchDesigner and explore yourself so learners can see the concept in action. Topic pages also pull their video and component file (tox) content from the web, ensuring the materials stay up to date.
The TouchDesigner Curriculum was built to be modular — with materials that can be remixed and reused. Instructors and learners alike are encouraged to pull materials from the Curriculum to use in their own courses, workshops, and study groups.
Curriculum Navigator
To support the exploration of course content, the Curriculum Navigator is a TouchDesigner component that allows users to explore example networks along with their accompanying documentation. Built on the principles of Operator Snippets, the Navigator is intended to allow for fast access to educational materials alongside a practical TouchDesigner network.
Built for both Instructors & Learners
The Curriculum has a two-fold approach: to help both educators and learners with the core fundamentals of TouchDesigner. The course format allows for both independent learning or a more traditional education format. If learners make an account on the TouchDesigner Curriculum site, they can track their progress by marking topics as ‘complete’ — giving them a clear record of what they've accomplished so far in a given lesson. The concise format of topics also means that instructors can provide their students with succinct reference materials.
In addition to the course content, the TouchDesigner Curriculum also includes a sample Syllabus for Instructors as well as sample Exercises for new and intermediate learners — making it easier than ever to learn TouchDesigner.
Continuing to Grow and Learn
The TouchDesigner community is one of the most exciting and engaging groups of creative deveopers, makers and coders in the world. For this reason, it’s more important than ever that we continue to support educators and learners who are exploring the intersection of art and technology with TouchDesigner. We’ve already started planning how the Curriculum can grow — from additional content to tools that allow educators to remix materials further into their own courses. If you’re interested in learning more or contributing to this resource, please don’t hesitate to reach out.
Happy Noding!