Intro to TouchDesigner introduces TouchDesigner, a node based platform for building interactive, real time visuals. The course is built for beginners: no prior TouchDesigner experience is necessary, and it’s a strong fit for artists, designers, and creatives who want to work with interactive visuals, audio reactive systems, and real time 3D.
TouchDesigner’s visual, node based workflow makes the same programming ideas taught in Coding Art Fundamentals, logic, data, and transformation, visible as a network of connected operators instead of lines of code. The course builds technical fluency in TouchDesigner’s own terms, one operator family at a time, while staying open to where a student’s own interests pull the work.
Demonstrations are built live in class, node by node. A few weeks also share a pre-made reference network for students to open and explore on their own, on top of that week’s own demonstration. The course divides into two halves, moving from foundational 2D work into 3D, GPU driven systems, and cross-software connection.
The first half builds a 2D visual toolkit, one operator family at a time, covering:
Every week from Week 1 through Week 6 carries a running requirement: each assignment has to include at least one TOP the student hasn’t used before, found through TouchDesigner’s own operator documentation (right-click any operator → Help) rather than demoed in class.
Midterm Project. This is where the first half’s skills come together: an audio reactive TouchDesigner piece, built by experimenting with image processing, geometric shapes, noise, or video input, using the “2D Compile” network and techniques from the weeks leading up to it as a starting point. See the Midterm Project page for the full assignment.
The second half introduces 3D and GPU driven systems, then opens TouchDesigner outward to other software:
See the Course Schedule page for the week-by-week breakdown of this half.
Final Project. The final project is done in groups, intentionally. Collaboration and co-creation are a core part of any art practice, and one of the things that keeps human made work different from anything a machine can produce on its own. Working in a group also builds skills every professional needs: communicating clearly, solving problems together, asking for help, and reaching decisions as a team. See the Final Project page for the full assignment.
A GitHub repository of project files (.toe/.tox) builds a working portfolio, alongside a rendered video of each major project since TouchDesigner’s own files aren’t readable the way code is. The final project adds a digital recording of the performance as part of that same portfolio.
The operator fluency and GPU driven techniques built in this course carry directly into later specializations, including:
By the end of this course, BFA students will be able to:
MFA students, in addition, begin building toward:
Every class is recorded, and the recording stays available afterward as a reference. There’s a lot of content each week; recordings are the safety net for re-watching, not required viewing.
Students need a laptop capable of running TouchDesigner, which is GPU heavy: older or integrated-graphics laptops may struggle from Week 8 (3D, Instancing, and POPs) onward. No computer lab is available this semester, so this must be a student’s own machine, and instance and particle counts in Weeks 9 and 11 are kept to what a typical personal laptop handles comfortably.
No textbook purchase is required. See the Resources page for class links.
Each weekly assignment is posted in Canvas, and can vary week to week: sometimes it’s recreating that day’s network plus the required new operator, sometimes open exploration, sometimes specific instructions. Students submit their network as a .toe file through Canvas, zipped with its Assets folder if it uses any external assets, keeping asset references relative rather than as absolute file paths, so nothing breaks once it’s unzipped on another machine. The Midterm and Final projects are both presented in person; see their own pages for details.
The weekly assignments category splits evenly across however many weekly assignments actually run that semester, not a fixed per-assignment percentage.
All assignments are posted in Canvas with their instructions and deadline, and are submitted digitally through Canvas. The Midterm and Final projects additionally include an in person presentation. The Week 14 AI workshop doesn’t have its own assignment; attendance that day counts as that week’s assignment, within the weekly assignments category above.