Activate LED Ceilings

A friend of mine was asked by his boss if he was familiar with Touchdesigner. He was not.
Instead, he put in a referral for me.

A phone call, an email, and meeting later, I was on contract.

Its kinda funny how it went–in a lot of ways.

The boss was–despite many years my senior–extremely respectful of my knowledge. Always asking what I thought, how they should approach this or that, etc. It was an extremely validating experience.

It was kinda funny how the project itself went, too. It was constant questions.

Does this make sense to you?
Is it possible to transmit over different network interfaces?
When can you start working?

How does it look?
This is the unit for the PA?
Can I get a line from it?

...

Can I get a line from it?

It was off to the races.

Touchdesigner's built-in Audio Analysis was kinda meh.

Made my own, custom tuned to the venue's playlist.
It also detected when songs ended, and triggered the randomization of effect layers.

Needed some different effects.

Made thirteen (not counting ones for troubleshooting),
and unleashed the TouchEngine monster on my network.

And the Python monster too.

Employees should have a control panel.

Have four.

UI, hands down.

But the way I was most challenged?

Listing all the ways this project challenged me would take until the end of time.

Really getting intimate with Touchdesigner's take on UI was invaluable.

In Touchdesigner, everybody lives together.

Pictured below is the internals for the live tab pictured above.

Literally.

The business logic to control layer levels and apply backgrounds is handled within the control panel for those settings within those layers.

I also found myself simply enjoying UI work within Touchdesigner. It was super easy to create something, and change it later if needed.

It took me mastering Replicator, Containers, and OPViewers, but the entire process was extremely intuitive.

Data very naturally flows through UI.

There were times when many who were involved–myself included–had second thoughts about Touchdesigner being our platform for this.

I would always eventually shut them up, though.

There were absolutely hurdles though,

• Optimization

• Networking issues

• My own intelligence

• Incorrectly reported specs

It was a wonder that I was able to hardware-accelerate as much as I did, yet I still feel as though I could have done more.

The lighting specifications were adapted into a UV texture to reference the main texture with the patterns.

Replicator replicated a couple of things in some places, too.

(but only a couple)

However, the project was unfortunately not successful.

The true level of interactivity we were aspiring for proved unattainable due to another company's uncooperativeness in regards to accessing their software.

Happens.

What we were left with was cool, but eventually deemed not worth the trouble.

I get it.

I'm happy I made it. That's all that matters.