Some insights on the Chladni Cymatics in Touchdesigner

Hi friends! I promised to give some insights on how the Patreon version of the Chladni plate is different than the one from the tutorial. I hope you've liked the tutorial, despite it's shorter, it took me more time than usual, so great to see quite some views and comments already!

First of all, fellow TD'er 'Function Store' (https://www.patreon.com/function_store) mentioned the downsides on working with global OPs on this one. Since I usually approach these kind of projects as a one offs, I tend to forget the uses of the more .tox approach, as in, multiple version of it in one file. Global OPs will interfere with each other and you'll end up with all these red crosses flying around. So adjusted that on, used the good old parenting().

I hope you've realized that you're not obliged to use only 'cosines', personally I got nicer shapes with setting everything to sinus. But you can of course randomize that as well per iteration.

In my .toe version I've added a position for the Z as well. I was playing with that when I was trying to spread the particles out in more denser areas. You can imagine that if you'd change the camera position more from an angle view, the transformations in the Z direction would be quite noticeable for interesting effects. I was thinking connecting it to a midikeyboard and let it vibrate in the Z direction, like the sand is actually bouncing on the plate.

What I eventually didn't like as well is how the particles tend to speed up at the borders, so I've implemented a smooth transition to the border, and even a uniform for controlling the 'borderspeed'.

I also added another noiseTOP for controlling the speed per particle, it's subtle but I like how it becomes slightly more organic. The addition of a random color per particle adds up as well, that's just a different TOP at the instancing section of the geoCOMP.

Regarding the particles themselves, I actually used propper geometry for this. A sphereSOP, low poly as possible, but with enough variations in surface normal directions. This would help if you'd like to play a bit with lighting. Make sure you use a phongMAT or pbrMAT instead of the constantCHOP, otherwise it would just be an emissive kind of shader.

Push buttons, pull sliders, twist knobs!

Best,

Stefan

workfiles here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/chladni-cymatics-83085080