04 - Network Navigation - TouchDesigner Tutorial: Beginner Crash Course — Transcript

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1. 0:01So we've been using this word network so far
2. 0:04and what is a network
3. 0:06So we usually call networks our areas of the
4. 0:09program inside of our TouchDesigner kind of environment
5. 0:13So this might be our network
6. 0:15but what we'll see soon is that you
7. 0:17can have many different networks inside of TouchDesigner
8. 0:20because of the way you can kind of encapsulate certain functionality
9. 0:24and kind of the pseudo 3D aspect of the
10. 0:28hierarchy of a TouchDesigner kind of application
11. 0:31So this would be considered a network
12. 0:35There's no reason it's not considered a network
13. 0:36It's a bunch of operators inside of TouchDesigner doing a piece of functionality
14. 0:41And generally
15. 0:41what we do is this whole area here
16. 0:44where you see is kind of the main part of our screen
17. 0:47that's called our network editor
18. 0:49which is different than you know
19. 0:50at the bottom we have a timeline
20. 0:52at the top
21. 0:52we kind of have menus
22. 0:54inside of this pane is our network editor
23. 0:57and this is where we're working on creating operators
24. 1:00building our functionality and
25. 1:02you know doing whatever else we want to do inside of TouchDesigner
26. 1:05Now all areas of the network have different paths
27. 1:09and these paths are very similar to how paths might work
28. 1:14for files and folders on your computer
29. 1:17So the path structure that we have inside
30. 1:19of TouchDesigner is actually most similar to Linux
31. 1:22or Unix-based kind of operating systems
32. 1:25Uh and you can see right here
33. 1:27we have what's called our path bar
34. 1:29and this shows us the path to the
35. 1:31network that we're inside of right now
36. 1:34So we'll talk about more how to get around the different network
37. 1:38but it's important to note that once we start encapsulating different things
38. 1:43we'll start looking at the network
39. 1:44and we'll especially start paying attention to the path here
40. 1:46And like I said it's most similar to a Linux
41. 1:48or Unix environment where
42. 1:50you know it starts with a forward slash
43. 1:52and then you have for instance
44. 1:53project one
45. 1:53That's the name of
46. 1:55of the area of the network I'm in
47. 1:57I could go inside something like this geo one
48. 1:59and then it would be /projectone/geoone
49. 2:02So it's
50. 2:03it's exactly like a folder
51. 2:05and file structure where kind of the operators are our files
52. 2:08and containers and other components that we can
53. 2:11put stuff inside of become our folders
54. 2:14So with that said let's
55. 2:16let's look at navigating the network a little bit and exploring these paths
56. 2:19So like I just said
57. 2:21right now we are at /projectone/
58. 2:25That means we are inside of a component named
59. 2:29you know project one
60. 2:30So what I can see here is that
61. 2:32if I turn off this little plus button
62. 2:35there are operators that all have different colors
63. 2:38and those colors are associated with families
64. 2:40But the gray-edged operators are important in this case
65. 2:44because they kind of act as our folders
66. 2:47So for example
67. 2:48what I could do is I could double-click on this
68. 2:51you know operator named geo one
69. 2:54and then all of a sudden you can see
70. 2:55my path bar has changed to be /projectone/geoone
71. 3:00and I have a totally new area of the network which has operators I
72. 3:04I wasn't seeing before
73. 3:06because now we are inside a different network of our kind of TouchDesigner application
74. 3:12And just like I was saying with that folder and file
75. 3:15you know hierarchy that's similar to Linux or Windows or macOS
76. 3:18you know this geo one component had other components inside of it
77. 3:25Now what you'll notice is that
78. 3:26if you try and do this on all the operators
79. 3:28nothing happens
80. 3:29You know if I'm trying to double-click on these different operators
81. 3:33nothing happens
82. 3:34It's because only those gray operators like I mentioned
83. 3:37and we'll go up a level in a moment to
84. 3:39to talk about that
85. 3:40can hold other operators inside of them
86. 3:43So we saw that double-clicking was a way to go into an operator
87. 3:48Now what we can do is there's multiple different ways to get up
88. 3:51Now
89. 3:52one that I never use
90. 3:54but you should know about
91. 3:55because just in case it happens and you're kind of curious what's going on
92. 3:59you can use the mouse wheel to just
93. 4:00start scrolling backwards out of a network
94. 4:03and when you get far enough
95. 4:04all of a sudden you'll kind of leave
96. 4:07that area of the network you are
97. 4:08Now you saw we're back in our familiar kind of starting template
98. 4:12We see the path is now /projectone/
99. 4:15So you can use the scroll wheel to also go into a network
100. 4:19So if you just keep zooming in on it
101. 4:20eventually you'll land in it
102. 4:22and similarly scrolling out gets you out of it
103. 4:24But I really don't recommend this for most users because
104. 4:27A it's slow compared to the
105. 4:29the keyboard shortcuts I'm about to show you
106. 4:31and B
107. 4:33it just takes too long
108. 4:34I mean it
109. 4:34it really just is slow
110. 4:36It's not as accurate
111. 4:37So the keyboard shortcuts that we're going to use are
112. 4:40firstly I to go inside of a network
113. 4:43That's how you make it easy to remember
114. 4:45I to go in
115. 4:46So when I hit I with that operator selected
116. 4:48I go inside of it
117. 4:50and U to go up a level
118. 4:52So I hit U
119. 4:53I jump up a level
120. 4:54I hit I
121. 4:55I jump in a level
122. 4:56I hit U
123. 4:57I jump back out
124. 4:58And you can notice that we're still inside of something called project one
125. 5:02So let's hit U and take a look at what we have here
126. 5:06So you can see if we hit U
127. 5:07now we're at /
128. 5:09which on kind of Linux systems is your root
129. 5:11and this is what we call the root of our network
130. 5:13We have one gray operator here
131. 5:17like we said which can hold other operators
132. 5:19We've got a few more here called perform and local
133. 5:22Ninety-nine point nine nine nine percent of the time you should just ignore perform
134. 5:27and local on root
135. 5:28and you should always just work inside of your own kind of container
136. 5:31where you can put your functionality
137. 5:33So like I said
138. 5:35I goes inside of a network
139. 5:37You can see every time we hit it
140. 5:39U goes out of a network
141. 5:41It goes up one level
142. 5:42And then one other very useful thing is H
143. 5:46The H key does something called home
144. 5:49It homes your network
145. 5:50and basically fits all the operators inside of that
146. 5:53network onto the available screen real estate
147. 5:56So for example
148. 5:57if I was to drag this operator really far away
149. 6:01and I was working in here and I didn't know
150. 6:03you know where did that operator go
151. 6:05I could hit H
152. 6:07and what it would do is find the boundaries
153. 6:09of all of the operators inside of that network
154. 6:12and resize the whole thing and center it onto my screen
155. 6:15So with a combination of using something like
156. 6:17the I key to go into networks
157. 6:20H to kind of just home them really
158. 6:21quickly to the center of your screen
159. 6:24U to go outside of them
160. 6:26you can really quickly
161. 6:27and easily move around the network in
162. 6:28much faster way than it would be
163. 6:30to do kind of this zoom in
164. 6:32and out with your mouse wheel and like wait for animations to complete
165. 6:35You know the I
166. 6:36and the U method and using the home are the much
167. 6:39much much more preferred way to go about network navigation
168. 6:42So with that said
169. 6:43let's keep looking at some other elements of TouchDesigner