Experimental:TOP

Experimental - Skipping Glossary

Summary

See also Category:TOPs for a full list of articles related to TOPs.

Texture Operators, also known as TOPs, are image operators that provide real-time, GPU-based compositing and image manipulation. All calculations for TOPs are performed on the system's GPU. TOPs can be used for preparing textures, compositing streams images and movies, building control panel elements, manipulation of 32-bit floating point data, and almost any other image task you might have. TOPs support many formats, including floating-point image formats for working with high-dynamic range (HDR) images.

All renders and composites occur offscreen with TOPs. Data can be scaled to any resolution, limited only by the amount of graphics RAM and the maximum resolution of the graphics card.

TOPs that are being used to hold point cloud data, where R G B holds 32-bit X Y Z data can be viewed as a 3D set of points by right-clicking on the viewer and selecting View as Points.

NOTE: TouchDesigner Non-Commercial is limited to 1280x1280 resolution.

TOP

Sweet 16 TOPs

The following 16 TOPs are commonly used, we recommend familiarizing yourself with them.

TOP	Purpose	Related TOP
Movie File In	Read movies, still images, or a sequence of still images.	Video Device In, Movie File Out
Ramp	Create vertical, horizontal, radial, and circular ramps.	Constant, Noise
Level	Adjust contrast, brightness, gamma, black level, color range, opacity.	Luma Level
Transform	Translate, scale, rotate, multi-repeat tile, background fill.	Flip
Over	Place and shift one image over another based on the alpha of one image.	Cross, Multiply
Text	Text generation with variety of fonts.
Blur	Blur.	Luma Blur
Composite	Combine multiple images with variety of operations like under, difference.
Render	Render 3D objects, lights and camera into an image.
CHOP to	Convert CHOP channels into scanlines of an image.
Resolution	Change the resolution of an image and smooth-filter down.	all TOPs alter resolution
Crop	Crop image to smaller resolution.	Corner Pin, Fit
Select	Selects an image from the same network or a different network.	Switch
Reorder	Re-order the channels of an image.	Channel Mix
Cache	Hold a static or dynamic sequence of images and output one of them.	Feedback
Displace	Use red-blue of one image to warp another image.	Time Machine

All TOPs are documented in the Category:TOPs.

TOP Flags

The lower right corner contains only 2 flags, the TOP’s Display Flag and Viewer Active Flag. Turning on the display flag displays the TOP as a background in the current Network Pane. Turning on multiple TOP Display Flags will display a tiled sequence of multiple TOP outputs as the background of the network pane.

TOP Viewers

All TOP operators have interactive Node Viewers. To interact with it, turn on the TOP's Viewer Active Flag to make the viewer active.

A gray checkerboard background will be displayed in images where an alpha channel is present. This can be turned off by opening Preferences in the Edit menu. In preferences you can choose to use checkerboard or black as you alpha background.

Use LMB to move the image around. Use MMB to zoom in and out of the image. Re-center the image by using the home shortcut "h".

Clicking the RMB will open the viewer options menu. Keyboard shortcuts are listed beside each entry in the menu.

Home - Re-centers and scales the image to fit in the viewer.

Display Pixel Values - Displays pixel information over the image. The Timeline should be playing forward for the values to properly update.

The following is displayed:

• cursor uv coordinates
• cursor xy pixel coordinates
• RGB values 0-255
• RGB values 0-1

Display Field Guide - Displays a 24x24 field guide over the image. The guide also displays the action safe zone and title safe zone for the image.

Display Mode - The display mode options give the option of viewing certain channels of the image.

The following display modes are available:

• Color - Display all RGB channles.
• Red/Green/Blue/Alpha - Display the Red/Green/Blue/Alpha channel respectively.
• Mono - Display the image in monochrome.
• Normalize Split - Displays each channel in the image at the same time normalized from 0-1. Excellent for viewing floating point and point cloud data.

View as Points - Displays the data in the TOP as 3D points for each pixel assuming red = x, green = y, and blue = z. Useful for viewing point cloud data.

Point cloud data displayed 3 modes: 1) Color 2) Normalized Split 3) View as Points

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  TOP operators

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  A TOP network

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  TOP viewer options

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  Composite with Feedback

Using TOPs

• 2D image data, everything processed on GPU, generators and filters, real-time compositing
• Import: Movie File In TOP, Video Device In TOP
• Export: right-click menu, Movie File Out TOP, Export Movie Dialog

See also

Category:TOPs
Mipmapping and Texture Filtering
TOP Generator Common Page and TOP Filter Common Page
Pixel Formats

The Graphics Processing Unit. This is the high-speed, many-core processor of the graphics card/chip that takes geometry, images and data from the CPU and creates images and processed data.

An Operator Family that creates, composites and modifies images, and reads/writes images and movies to/from files and the network. TOPs run on the graphics card's GPU.

An Operator Family which operate on Channels (a sequence of numbers (Samples)) which are used for animation, audio, mathematics, simulation, logic, UI construction, and data streamed from/to devices and protocols.

Each SOP has a list of Points. Each point has an XYZ 3D position value plus other optional attributes. Each polygon Primitive is defined by a vertex list, which is list of point numbers.

Exporting is the connection of CHOP channels to parameters of operators. The output of each exporting CHOP is one or more channels, active only while the CHOP Viewer is on. The current value of a channel can be exported to a parameter of any operator, overriding that parameter's value. See Parameter.

Any floating window that is not a Pane or Viewer.