Interactive Projections

Tracking the position of people and objects in Touchdesigner can be doneuseful into acreate varietyinteractive ofprojection differentmapping ways;projects. In TouchDesigner, there are various methods to achieve this; This tutorial will briefly introduce you to some of the most common techniques used to find outdetermine the position of ouran objectobject. inLet's real-time.dive in!

To beginbegin, with you can chooseopen the VideoDeviceIn TOP and select your DEVICE in the parameters window,window - you can read more about operators and the parameters window here. Connect this operator to a Null TOP and clickactivate the Display option by clicking on the Displayblue dot,dot in your node, this will allow you to easily monitor any alterationalterations to your original source. 

Object Isolation 

ThisThe first method aimsfocuses toon isolateisolating theyour object we want to track, to achieve this we'll beby combining various TOPs to removeeliminate theits background. It's important to note that this process begins outside of Touchdesigner,TouchDesigner, during scene setup in ourreal setlife; up of the scene: Make sureEnsure your background is ofhas a solid, contrasting colour to your object.

In Touchdesigner, right-click on the connection line to INSERT a node to your network, here select the Level TOP. This operator is useful to adjust the brightness and contrast of your imageimage. - useUse the sliders available to create a strong contrast between your object and background. Next add a Threshold TOP and change the COMPARATOR to Greater, then alter the THRESHOLD value to adjust the intensity of this effect. At this point your object should be highlighted in white, while the rest of your image should be transparent. 

 

*** The rest of this tutorial is a work in progress ***

AI

Blob Track

Colour 

For this we'll be looking into x and y co-ordinates.

While our source of input for these different methods will always be a camera, the same workflow will help you work around any sensor using x and y co-ordinates to determine position.