With a start on point lights, one of the next questions you might ask is “what about cone lights?” Well, it just so happens that there’s a way to approach a deferred pipeline for cone lights just like with point lights. This example still has a bit to go with a few lingering mis-behaviors, but it is a start for those interested in looking at complex lighting solutions for their realtime scenes.

You can find a repo for all of this work and experimentation here: TouchDesigner Deferred Lighting.

TouchDesigner networks are notoriously difficult to read, and this doc is intended to help shed some light on the ideas explored in this initial sample tox that’s largely flat.

This approach is very similar to point lights, with the additional challenge of needing to think about lights as directional. We’ll see that the first stage and last of this process – is consistent with our Point Light example, but in the middle we need to make some changes. We can get started by again with color buffers.

Color Buffers

These four color buffers represent all of that information that we need in order to do our lighting calculations further down the line. At this point we haven’t done the lighting calculations yet – just set up all of the requisite data so we can compute our lighting in another pass.

Our four buffers represent:

• position – renderselect_postition
• normals – renderselect_normal
• color – renderselect_color
• uvs – renderselect_uv

If we look at our GLSL material we can get a better sense of how that’s accomplished.

Essentially, the idea here is that we’re encoding information about our scene in color buffers for later combination. In order to properly do this in our scene we need to know point position, normal, color, and uv. This is normally handled without any additional intervention by the programmer, but in the case of working with lots of lights we need to organize our data a little differently.

Light Attributes

Here we’ll begin to see a divergence from our previous approach.

We are still going to compute and pack data for the position, color, and falloff for our point lights like in our previous example. The difference now is that we also need to compute a look-at position for each of our lights. In addition to our falloff data we’ll need to also consider the cone angle and delta of our lights. For the time being cone angle is working, but cone delta is broken – pardon my learning in public here.

For the sake of sanity / simplicity we’ll use a piece of geometry to represent the position of our point lights – similar to the approach used for instancing. In our network we can see that this is represented by our null SOP null_lightpos. We convert this to CHOP data and use the attributes from this null (number of points) to correctly ensure that the rest of our CHOP data matches the correct number of samples / lights we have in our scene. In this case we’re using a null since we want to position the look-at points at some other position than our lights themselves. Notice that our circle has one transform SOP to describe light position, and another transform SOP to describe look-at position. In the next stage we’ll use our null_light_pos CHOP and our null_light_lookat CHOP for the lighting calculations – we’ll also end up using the results of our object CHOP null_cone_rot to be able to describe the rotation of our lights when rendering them as instances.

When it comes to the color of our lights, we can use a noise or ramp TOP to get us started. These values are ultimately just CHOP data, but it’s easier to think of them in a visual way – hence the use of a ramp or noise TOP. The attributes for our lights are packed into CHOPs where each sample represents the attributes for a different light. We’ll use a texelFetchBuffer() call in our next stage to pull the information we need from these arrays. Just to be clear, our attributes are packed in the following CHOPs:

• position – null_light_pos
• color – null_light_color
• falloff – null_light_falloff
• light cone – null_light_cone

This means that sample 0 from each of these four CHOPs all relate to the same light. We pack them in sequences of three channels, since that easily translates to a vec3 in our next fragment process.

The additional light cone attribute here is used to describe the radius of the cone and the degree of softness at the edges (again pardon the fact that this isn’t yet working).

Combining Buffers

Next up we combine our color buffers along with our CHOPs that hold the information about our lights location and properties.

What does this mean exactly? It’s here that we loop through each light to determine its contribution to the lighting in the scene, accumulate that value, and combine it with what’s in our scene already. This assemblage of our stages and lights is “deferred” so we’re only doing this set of calculations based on the actual output pixels, rather than on geometry that may or may not be visible to our camera. For loops are generally frowned on in openGL, but this is a case where we can use one to our advantage and with less overhead than if we were using light components for our scene.

Here’s a look at the GLSL that’s used to combine our various buffers:

If you look at the final pieces of our for loop you’ll find that much of this process is borrowed from the example Malcolm wrote (Thanks Malcolm!). This starting point serves as a baseline to help us get started from the position of how other lights are handled in Touch.

Representing Lights

At this point we’ve successfully completed our lighting calculations, had them accumulate in our scene, and have a slick looking render. However, we probably want to see them represented in some way. In this case we might want to see them just so we can get a sense of if our calculations and data packing is working correctly.

To this end, we can use instances and a render pass to represent our lights as spheres to help get a more accurate sense of where each light is located in our scene. If you’ve used instances before in TouchDesigner this should look very familiar. If that’s new to you, check out: Simple Instancing

Our divergence here is that rather than using spheres, we’re instead using cones to represent our lights. In a future iteration the width of the cone base should scale along with our cone angle, but for now let’s celebrate the fact that we have a way to see where our lights are coming from. You’ll notice that the rotate attributes generated from the object CHOP are used to describe the rotation of the instances. Ultimately, we probably don’t need these representations, but they sure are handy when we’re trying to get a sense of what’s happening inside of our shader.

Post Processing for Final Output

Finally we need to assemble our scene and do any final post process bits to get make things clean and tidy.

Up to this point we haven’t done any anti-aliasing, and our instances are in another render pass. To combine all of our pieces, and do take off the sharp edges we need to do a few final pieces of work. First we’ll composite our scene elements, then do an anti-aliasing pass. This is also where you might choose to do any other post process treatments like adding a glow or bloom to your render.

The Channel Class Wiki Documentation

Taking a little time to better understand the channel class provides a number of opportunities for getting a stronger handle on what’s happening in TouchDesigner. This can be especially helpful if you’re working with CHOP executes or just trying to really get a handle on what on earth CHOPs are all about.

To get started, it might be helpful to think about what’s really in a CHOP. Channel Operators are largely arrays (lists in python lingo) of numbers. These arrays can be only single values, or they might be a long set of numbers. In any given CHOP all of the channels will have the same length (we could also say that they have the same number of samples). That’s helpful to know as it might shape the way we think of channels and samples.

Before we go any further let’s stop to think through the above just a little bit more. Let’s first think about a constant CHOP with channel called ‘chan1’. We know we can write a python reference for this chop like this:

op( 'constant1' )[ 'chan1' ]

or like this:

op( 'constant1' )[ 0 ]

Just as a refresher, we should remember that the syntax here is:
op( stringNameToOperator )[ channelNameOrIndex ]

That’s just great, but what happens if we have a pattern CHOP? If we drop down a default pattern CHOP (which has 1000 samples), and we try the same expression:

op( 'pattern1' )[ 'chan1' ]

We now get a constantly changing value. What gives?! Well, we’re now looking at bit list of numbers, and we haven’t told Touch where in that list of values we want to grab an index – instead touch is moving through that index with me.time.frame-1 as the position in the array. If you’re scratching your head, that’s okay we’re going to pull this apart a little more.

Okay, what’s really hiding from us is that CHOP references have a default value that’s provided for us. While we often simplify the reference syntax to:

op( stringNameToOperator )[ channelNameOrIndex ]

In actuality, the real reference syntax is:
op( stringNameToOperator )[ channelNameOrIndex ][ arrayPosition ]

In single sample CHOPs we don’t usually need to worry about this third argument – if there’s only one value in the list Touch very helpfully grabs the only value there. In a multi-sample CHOP channel, however, we need more information to know what sample we’re really after. Let’s try our reference to a narrow down to a single sample in that pattern CHOP. Let’s say we want sample 499:

op( 'pattern1' )[ 'chan1' ][ 499 ]

With any luck you should now be seeing that you’re only getting a single value. Success!

But what does this have to do with the Channel Class? Well, if we take a closer look at the documentation ( Channel Class Wiki Documentation ), we might find some interesting things, for example:

Members

• valid (Read Only) True if the referenced chanel value currently exists, False if it has been deleted. Identical to bool(Channel).
• index (Read Only) The numeric index of the channel.
• name (Read Only) The name of the channel.
• owner (Read Only) The OP to which this object belongs.
• vals Get or set the full list of Channel values. Modifying Channel values can only be done in Python within a Script CHOP.

Okay, that’s great, but so what? Well, let’s practice our python and see what we might find if we try out a few of these members.

We might start by adding a pattern CHOP. I’m going to change my pattern CHOP to only be 5 samples long for now – we don’t need a ton of samples to see what’s going on here. Next I’m going to set up a table DAT and try out the following bits of python:

python
op( 'null1' )[0].valid
op( 'null1' )[0].index
op( 'null1' )[0].name
op( 'null1' )[0].owner
op( 'null1' )[0].exports
op( 'null1' )[0].vals

I’m going to plug that table DAT into an eval DAT to evaluate the python expressions so I can see what’s going on here. What I get back is:

True
0
chan1
/project1/base_the_channel_class/null1
[]
0.0 0.25 0.5 0.75 1.0

If we were to look at those side by side it would be:

So far that’s not terribly exciting… or is it?! The real power of these Class Members comes from CHOP executes. I’m going to make a quick little example to help pull apart what’s exciting here. Let’s add a Noise CHOP with 5 channels. I’m going to turn on time slicing so we only have single sample channels. Next I’m going to add a Math CHOP and set it to ceiling – this is going to round our values up, giving us a 1 or a 0 from our noise CHOP. Next I’ll add a null. Next I’m going to add 5 circle TOPs, and make sure they’re named circle1 – circle5.

Here’s what I want – Every time the value is true (1), I want the circle to be green, when it’s false (0) I want the circle to be red. We could set up a number of clever ways to solve this problem, but let’s imagine that it doesn’t happen too often – this might be part of a status system that we build that’s got indicator lights that help us know when we’ve lost a connection to a remote machine (this doesn’t need to be our most optimized code since it’s not going to execute all the time, and a bit of python is going to be simpler to write / read). Okay… so what do we put in our CHOP execute?! Well, before we get started it’s important to remember that our Channel class contains information that we might need – like the index of the channel. In this case we might use the channel index to figure out which circle needs updating. Okay, let’s get something started then!

python
def onValueChange(channel, sampleIndex, val, prev):
    
    # set up some variables
    offColor        = [ 1.0, 0.0, 0.0 ]
    onColor         = [ 0.0, 1.0, 0.0 ]
    targetCircle    = 'circle{digit}'

    # describe what happens when val is true
    if val:
        op( targetCircle.format( digit = channel.index + 1 ) ).par.fillcolorr   = onColor[0]
        op( targetCircle.format( digit = channel.index + 1 ) ).par.fillcolorg   = onColor[1]
        op( targetCircle.format( digit = channel.index + 1 ) ).par.fillcolorb   = onColor[2]

    # describe what happens when val is false
    else:
        op( targetCircle.format( digit = channel.index + 1 ) ).par.fillcolorr   = offColor[0]
        op( targetCircle.format( digit = channel.index + 1 ) ).par.fillcolorg   = offColor[1]
        op( targetCircle.format( digit = channel.index + 1 ) ).par.fillcolorb   = offColor[2]
    return

Alright! That works pretty well… but what if I want to use a select and save some texture memory?? Sure. Let’s take a look at how we might do that. This time around we’ll only make two circle TOPs – one for our on state, one for our off state. We’ll add 5 select TOPs and make sure they’re named select1-select5. Now our CHOP execute should be:

python
def onValueChange(channel, sampleIndex, val, prev):
    
    # set up some variables
    offColor        = 'circle_off'
    onColor         = 'circle_on'
    targetCircle    = 'select{digit}'

    # describe what happens when val is true
    if val:
        op( targetCircle.format( digit = channel.index + 1 ) ).par.top      = onColor

    # describe what happens when val is false
    else:
        op( targetCircle.format( digit = channel.index + 1 ) ).par.top      = offColor
    return

Okay… I’m going to add one more example to the sample code, and rather than walk you all the way through it I’m going to describe the challenge and let you pull it apart to understand how it works – challenge by choice, if you’re into what’s going on here take it all apart, otherwise you can let it ride.

Okay… so, what I want is a little container that displays a channel’s name, an indicator if the value is > 0 or < 0, another green / red indicator that corresponds to the >< values, and finally the text for the value itself. I want to use selects when possible, or just set the background TOP for a container directly. To make all this work you’ll probably need to use .name, .index, and .vals.

You can pull mine apart to see how I made it work here: base_the_channel_class.

Happy Programming!

BUT WAIT! THERE’S MORE!

Ivan DesSol asks some interesting questions:

Questions for the professor:
1) How can I find out which sample index in the channel is the current sample?
2) How is that number calculated? That is, what determines which sample is current?

If we’re talking about a multi sample channel let’s take a look at how we might figure that out. I mentioned this in passing above, but it’s worth taking a little longer to pull this one apart a bit. I’m going to use a constant CHOP and a trail CHOP to take a look at what’s happening here.

Let’s start with a simple reference one more time. This time around I’m going to use a pattern CHOP with 200 samples. I’m going to connect my pattern to a null (in my case this is null7). My resulting python should look like:

op( 'null7' )[ 'chan1' ]

Alright… so we’re speeding right along, and our value just keeps wrapping around. We know that our multi sample channel has an index, so for fun games and profit let’s try using me.time.frame:

op( 'null7' )[ 'chan1' ][ me.time.frame ]

Alright… well. That works some of the time, but we also get the error “Index invalid or out of range.” WTF does that even mean?! Well, remember an array or list has a specific length, when we try to grab something outside of that length we’ll seen an error. If you’re still stratching you’re head that’s okay – let’s take a look at it this way.

Let’s say we have a list like this:

fruit = [ apple, orange, kiwi, grape ]

We know that we can retrieve values from our list with an index:

print( fruit[ 0 ] ) | returns "apple"
print( fruit[ 1 ] ) | returns "orange"
print( fruit[ 2 ] ) | returns "kiwi"
print( fruit[ 3 ] ) | returns "grape"

If, however, we try:

print( fruit[ 4 ] )

Now we should see an out of range error… because there is nothing in the 4th position in our list / array. Okay, Matt – so how does that relate to our error earlier? The error we were seeing earlier is because me.time.frame (in a default network) evaluates up to 600 before going back to 1. So, to fix our error we might use modulo:

op( 'null7' )[ 'chan1' ][ me.time.frame % 200 ]

Wait!!! Why 200? I’m using 200 because that’s the number of samples I have in my pattern CHOP.

Okay! Now we’re getting somewhere.
The only catch is that if we look closely we’ll see that our refence with an index, and how touch is interpreting our previous refernce are different:

WHAT GIVES MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT!?
Alright, so there’s one more thing for us to keep in mind here. me.time.frame starts sequencing at 1. That makes sense, because we don’t usually think of frame 0 in animation we think of frame 1. Okay, cool. The catch is that our list indexes from the 0 position – in programming languages 0 still represents an index position. So what we’re actually seeing here is an off by one error.

Now that we now what the problem is it’s easy to fix:

op( 'null7' )[ 'chan1' ][ ( me.time.frame - 1 ) % 200 ]

Now we’re right as rain:

Hope that helps!