TouchDesigner-TE

This repository contains the TouchDesigner engine used to perform various tasks for Titanic's End Art Car.

Table of Contents

1. TouchDesigner-TE
2. Features
   • Pixel Mapping
   • Pixel Remapping and Simulation
   • Projection Mapping
   • Laser Mapping
3. Usage
   • Pixel Mapping and Pattern Selection
   • Model Config and Model Selection
4. Pattern Selection Note to the Artists

Features

The main software is the TE-Engine project and currently implements the following operations:

• Pixel Mapping: TE-Engine performs a full pixel mapping of the art car. This can be used to map any texture onto the art car's pixels. The pixel mapping is accompanied by a pattern running in the LXStudio software that receives the pixel values over NDI from TE-Engine and displays them on the car.
• Pixel Remapping and Simulation: TE-Engine can receive an NDI stream from the LXStudio software and map the incoming NDI stream onto a 3D model used for visualization and projection mapping. The TE-Engine app has a full 3D simulation of the car and can be used to show data coming from LXStudio or natively generated patterns in TouchDesigner.
• Projection Mapping: TE-Engine implements a full 3D camera-based projection mapping that can be used to receive data from LXStudio or native TouchDesigner patterns and project the model onto a 2D or 3D surface resembling the art car.
• Laser Mapping: TE-Engine implements a laser projection stack that can receive laser patterns from LXStudio or native TouchDesigner laser patterns and communicates them to Pangolin to display them on the lasers.

Note 1: The laser projection and the projection mapping components are using the same 3D models and hence can be used in one projection. This was tested by projecting the panel data using a regular projector and the edge data using a laser unit onto the same surface to form a single image.

Note 2: Projection mapping and laser mapping components are experimental features and are currently disabled in the TouchDesigner project. If needed, they can be enabled and used for one-off projects.

Usage

Here we will describe some of the main operations that can be done in the TE-Engine app.

Pixel Mapping and Pattern Selection

The TE-Engine app performs a full pixel mapping of the Titanic's End car and can be used to send pixel data to the LXStudio software over NDI.

The workflow for this is as follows:

1. Open the TE-Engine app in TouchDesigner.
2. Select the "pattern" component in the bottom left corner of the network.
3. Choose the Source Index in the parameters of this component.
4. The pattern selected in the pattern component will be mapped to the art car's pixels in the TE_mapper component.
5. The mapped pattern will be sent over NDI to LXStudio from the TE_ndi_out component.

Note: If the TE_mapped_switch_sim component's parameter Use LX NDI is on, the simulation in TouchDesigner will show the content it receives from LXStudio instead of the mapped patterns from the TE_mapper component.

Model Config and Model Selection

The models are primarily handled and updated in the LXStudio app. We have custom code that exports the models to a set of CSV and PNG files when they are updated. In TouchDesigner, we are checking for changes in the model files and reloading them on any change.

The changes should not happen during show time and mainly occur during the initial setup of the car. So the model reload will not be a performance issue for the TouchDesigner engine.

To choose the models, you need to configure the config/models.yaml file and point the models_dir to the LXStudio-TE/resources/models folder. On startup, the TE-Engine app will read the models and start monitoring them for changes.

Pattern Selection Note to the Artists

This app is designed to act as an engine, not a user-facing software. This is to keep the control surface of the art car in one place, which is in the LXStudio software. This means that pattern selection should be implemented by the artists or in collaboration with the Titanic's End developers to integrate new patterns generated in TouchDesigner with the LXStudio software.