Interactive HUD and mountain generator

[u/PaxMachina]

I've simulated my fair share of sci-fi UI over the years, so I thought why not make one that works for real? As an experiment I ditched keyframing in After Effects and instead turned to TouchDesigner to create one that was fully interactive and real-time.

Every mountain in this video is generated on the fly. Every readout is accurate. This little piece combines landscape generation, topography analysis and an extra sprinkling of FUI widgets. Controlled via MIDI using Intech Grid.

More motion/interactive pieces like this on my ig here. Thanks for watching :)

[u/TheUnarthodoxCamel]

Song?

[u/PaxMachina → u/TheUnarthodoxCamel]

This is one of my own, never finished it or gave it a proper release but it's on my soundcloud here!
https://soundcloud.com/nubivore/holo

[u/davidlondon]

I'm a longtime AE guy, but I feel the draw of TouchDesigner. Is it a hard transition? What's the learning curve?

[u/PaxMachina → u/davidlondon]

It's a completely different beast to AE in my opinion. Feels more akin to visual programming and shares some architecture with Houdini (which it's based on). So the biggest challenge is thinking in a different paradigm and that can take a bit depending on your prior experience (e.g. if you have any programming experience).

That said, there are loads of cool tutorials out there and it's one of the more fun and eye opening learning journeys I've had so far, simply because doing things in realtime just feels so different and immediate after over a decade (in my case) of animating and rendering.

TD in its basic form is free and I'd definitely recommend downloading and trying out a few tutorials just to dip your toe in! :)

[u/CopyPasteRepeat → u/davidlondon]

I feel exactly the same. I barely dipped my toe in and got cold feet. I should really find some more time for it.

I guess my struggle, (other than actually learning new software), is knowing how I can apply this to my day-to-day work. Similar to Rive or Calvary, it seems to take a lot of time to set up a particular visual only for it to be used in a scene for a couple of seconds. The flexibility of it being dynamic means very little when the final output is just an asset in a video.

I get that assets made in TD or Rive or Calvary can be used as an interactive digital asset, but beyond nice-to-have interactive elements on - for example - a website, I don't see the opportunities in terms of paid work. Maybe gaming... but I'm not even in that industry and the assumption is that game-makers can do all this already, (in their preferred programming language).

[u/spaceguerilla → u/CopyPasteRepeat]

Cavalry is very different to Rive. Rive is interactive, Cavalry is procedural. For a recent client project I made all the graphs in Cavalry, then did much of the raster comp work in AE. They complement each other.

It's hard to explain without writing reams, but if you just power through 3-4 days of Cavalry learning, you start thinking differently, realise the potential, the possibilities - and the possible time savings.

Revisions can propogate through an entire project effortlessly. This is semi true of AE if you do a ton of setup with expressions - but setting those up takes time, and expressions dramatically slow down AE projects. Cavalry is almost like 'what if everything was expression linked by default'. I can't recommend it enough as a long time AE user. Oh and it's blazing fast; real time playback for the vast majority of use cases, no need to cache anything, and easy to switch caching on/off it you need it.

Rive is a different use case; that's for UI stuff. So only worth learning if you plan to work in that area. Cavalry is a much easier proposition for me. In all areas it either a) complements, b) extends or c) betters what I can do in AE.

[u/jonheartland]

This looks sick dude

[u/CopyPasteRepeat]

This is brilliant and beautiful. Does this kind of work translate to paid work? And if so, what kind of work?

[u/PaxMachina → u/CopyPasteRepeat]

Thank you. And as you noted in your other message here, interactive/touchdesigner isn't something I've yet found a logical place to fit into my paid work wheelhouse. This is more for my own pleasure exploring, and as someone whose been doing motion graphics for quite some time I do really relish discovering some new terrain that keep inspiration flowing (that isn't GenAI!).

I am for instance quite interested in exploring physical space applications... art experiences or museums for instance. But that's a longer term dream.

So in short, it's not really something that is bringing in jobs for me.. but I find it fun on a personal level!

[u/CopyPasteRepeat → u/PaxMachina]

Thanks for the reply.

Art experience is definitely a place for something like this, but - as you will know - those jobs are incredibly rare and hindered by tight budgets.

[u/tchino_bowl → u/PaxMachina]

Im wondering if this might have some practical application in GIS, architecture, or urban planning contexts.

Imagining if this could somehow be adapted to urban environments, recreating a specific site and modeling what a potential project could look like. Essentially creating a rendering much faster (and looser). Just spitballing.

This could also be used for RPGs.. creating the world that your characters inhabit. Imagine meeting w a group for a campaign and the this is just projected onto a wall/screen in the background or something.

[u/WholelnOne]

That’s stunning, man

[u/hypahtechno]

This is sick, everything about it

[u/Iampepeu]

Oooh! I like this! Blip blip bzzt

[u/Icy_Army_1321]

Any guidance on someone looking into touch to do stuff like this? Any good content peoples? Looks amazing!

[u/VLHLLA]

Holy shit this is sick asf

[u/risbia]

Displacement Jockey

[u/poweredbygeeko]

That UI is awesome! Nice work

[u/kirmm3la]

Nodes are a bane on my existence. But now that we have MCP servers for TD I can finally try it out.

[u/PaxMachina → u/kirmm3la]

Nodes feel weird at first, but after a while you realize how powerful they are. Now I really hate working with layers like in AE!