TouchDesigner Tutorial: Video to ParticlesGPU - Turn Any Video into Organic Particles

welcome to the super fast touch designer tutorial Series in this tutorial we'll use any video as a particle emitter meaning the video itself will act as a source for spawning particles our goal is to position the particles along the edges of the video creating a dynamic effect based on its motion and contrast

before we start I want to share some important updates after testing different methods I've refined the way I deliver tutorials to make them clearer more efficient and shorter so no one gets lost along the way to follow this tutorial here's what you need to know one network setup I'll provide a screenshot of the

full network if it's too large I'll break it into multiple images with clear indications so you can recreate it without constantly pausing the video two prameters instead of adjusting parameters live I'll display them as static images allowing you to copy them at your own pace without interruptions let's get started chapter one overview the most important Concept

in this network is a core princip of touch designer how to turn RGB color data into XYZ spatial information if you can grasp this idea you'll be able to apply it to countless other scenarios in your projects for now just focus on mastering this technique for our tutorial and you'll have everything you

need let's talk about how the reorder operator helps us transform color channels into 3D coordinates for our particle system in touch designer each color Channel R GB can be interpreted as an axis X y z by using two ramp operators one set vertically and the other horizontally we combine their grayscale outputs effectively creating a

perfect 2D grid for the X and Y axis when we reorder these ramps into the red and green channels we get a neat coordinate system that defines each Point's horizontal and vertical position next we bring the video feed into the blue Channel which acts as the z-axis that means any brightness or movement in