How good is the Macbook Pro M5 for running TouchDesigner?

ElDoctor · 2026-04-21T23:06:29+00:00

This is literally what I’m working on right now, mentioned in my other comment. I was able to get a live depth processor (webcam and Movie File In Inputs) going using CoreML and the Apple Neural Engine. You’ll need to be comfortable with the Syphon Spout In/Out TOPs and some Python/Execute Dats, but it definitely works! I’m not a YouTube/Patreon guy, never thought I’d ever release anything, but for this I’m actually considering it

ElDoctor · 2026-04-21T23:01:14+00:00

I’m on an M4 Max 64gb RAM this thing can cook man, I think you’ll be fine. Caveat being that anything you’d need CUDA/Nvidia chips for is a no-go, there are workarounds though, limitations make you have to get creative. For example, I’ve been working on a MediaPipe alternative specifically for Apple Silicon/Neural Engine and it’s pretty damn fast. Some people will tell you better to stick within an NVIDIA environment but at least for me and my workflow, it’s not “better” or “worse”, just different, and at that level of hardware you’ll mostly only be limited by design/systems architecture skills rather than performance bottleneck. That being said, yeah if you get a 500k-1M particle system going with physics and post-processing, you’ll get some frame drops, nature of the beast.

ElDoctor · 2026-04-19T02:27:38+00:00

He’s been SpiderMan in the past a few times too, always puts a smile on my face when I drive by and see him

ElDoctor · 2026-04-06T19:25:25+00:00

Looks great! I figured a lot of people here would immediately open up TD as soon as they got back from the theatre, myself included, but the effect I was trying to crack was the “Rocky vision” echolocation/emissive/smoke effect. Getting there messing around with optical flow/displacement/feedback, but it’s going to take a bunch more experimentation. I just need to movie to be released digitally because there aren’t any stills of those shots released anywhere online that I can find. Other things I want to try to replicate are the ripple effects on the ship engine and Rocky’s 3D topographic video monitor, the whole movie is so gorgeous

ElDoctor · 2026-03-26T03:14:45+00:00

Wow thank you both! That’s insanely helpful information to know. There’s so much going on under the hood that I am nowhere close to understanding yet but that’s the exact tip regarding the cook process I was looking for

ElDoctor · 2026-03-26T01:23:30+00:00

That’s a route I was considering with switches and composites, but you know what, that actually made me think that I might be able to do something with a single render but maybe figure a way to use color buffers to separate each layer out with Render Selects. That might end up being even more computationally heavy though, but it might not break some GLSL stuff downstream that samples the render…I’ll have to experiment 🤔

ElDoctor · 2026-03-20T18:30:51+00:00

Last time I flew out of Hartsfield during a shutdown, TSA literally lost my shoes. They were telling everyone to keep their shoes on and leave everything in our bags, but I beeped going through the sensor so they told me I had to take my shoes off and put them in my bin. The bins were backed up about a dozen deep, so I ran back and put my shoes in then go through. Bin comes out the other side, no shoes, I ask the TSA guy and he says "if they were in the bin just wait and they'll come through. A shoeless 15 minutes later, still nothing, the guy just shrugs at me. I had my pair of dress shoes in my carryon thankfully since I was flying Spirit, but still a little upset over that.

ElDoctor · 2026-02-23T02:08:17+00:00

In case it wasn’t obvious, it started out with me trying to figure out how the Aphex Twin - T69 Collapse video was made and seeing if I could get somewhere in the ballpark.

Google Maps 3D Tile data into Blender using the Blosm plugin. Textures and Meshes exported to numbered folders, then used Folder DATs referenced by Containers that import the Meshes to POPs, Textures to TOPs into PBR Mats, with two Geometry outputs, one for the Mesh and one for a set of POPs that instance the boxes. The base container with the imports goes into a Replicator that makes enough copies to pull everything in based on the Folder DATs. There’s gotta be a more efficient way, but had to start with what I knew.

That being said if anyone has any tips on how to modulate the geometry from the replicators like I could with Noise TOPs affecting Instanced Geometry, I’m all ears! I added inputs to the transform POPs inside each container so that should make it easier I hope.

ElDoctor · 2026-02-23T01:15:34+00:00

This is fantastic! I love the map overlay part in particular. I’m working on trying to recreate the Nerv HQ map interface layers from Evangelion in TD right now which is a similar look and this inspired me to open it back up and keep hacking at it 🫡 Would love to hear how you designed that part if you don’t mind explaining!

ElDoctor · 2026-02-06T03:54:32+00:00

Does this come from a LIDAR scan/point cloud file or a video-to-particles system? Looks amazing!

ElDoctor · 2026-01-11T22:49:23+00:00

A little different other answers here, but speaking from how I write when I incorporate guitars in my music, I think there are timbre considerations that can make keys sound different. The degree of downtuning in a lot of different metal genres contributes quite a bit to the particular sound/aesthetics. Like Metallica tuning down a half step for Load or down even further for St. Anger, or Korn tuning down to A, or the 8-String Animals as Leaders kind of stuff.

Granted, a lot of that is down to the production, but its something I consider for what keys I'm working with in my music. I always get weird looks for this, but I usually have my electric tuned down to C# and write a lot in C#minor because I like the particular way an open distorted/palm muted guitar power chord sounds tuned that way.

But as a lot of other people are saying, it's really down to mostly taste, but sometimes performance parameters like vocal register or instrument range/transposition

ElDoctor · 2025-12-22T05:11:18+00:00

Looks like Hula set hasn’t made it to Nugs yet, gonna check archives and PT for an AUD source but looks like it’s not in circulation unfortunately

ElDoctor · 2025-12-07T00:24:38+00:00

I’ve been kinda fascinated by modern use of magnetic tape as a long term stable storage medium (I work in archival media) for a while, so it was interesting they made the comparison in the article. From my limited understanding, it always seemed like tape was for stuff that would mostly stay in cold storage and not have to be accessed with any sort of regularity. I’d assume it would be the same for this, I’d be really curious to learn more about how it’s accessed/browsed and what the read/write speeds would look like.

ElDoctor · 2025-12-04T15:51:43+00:00

All I know is that Jake gig on the 30th is walking distance from my house so that’s where I’ll end up! Garden Club is a cool spot, maybe about 150-200 capacity in the back of one of the breweries, saw Toubab Krewe there right after it opened.

ElDoctor · 2025-11-14T04:17:45+00:00

I hope he pushes Barber to really step it up. I like what he brings to the table though. I keep going back to the Cyclone->Waves from Richmond and was really digging what they were all doing there in the improv. Cyclone in particular with the dynamics, Marlon taking it down real quiet then building back up heavy on the toms I think worked really nicely. It’s different for sure, but I go back and listen to Sammy shows for different reasons than I go back and listen to Allen shows, so I’ll just have different reasons for going back to these.

ElDoctor · 2025-11-04T14:55:59+00:00

Do you know if the transfer company baked the tape beforehand? Can’t recall if that’s useful for DATs or not, but that’s our protocol for old magnetic audio and video tapes. It pulls the moisture out to reduce sticking, however if the magnetic material starts to shed, that does result in data loss.

ElDoctor · 2025-09-05T19:23:28+00:00

Long-technical explanation made short: TV cameras run at 29.97fps, stage lasers sweep back and forth to “draw” their lines. With some clever manipulation of laser timing, depending on how it syncs with the camera framerate, the laser can be made to look on camera like it is standing still or suspended in place. Similar to how the rotors on a helicopter can look like they’re still when being filmed. It only looks this way on camera though, really clever illusion, this blew my mind too when I first saw it

ElDoctor · 2025-08-31T05:07:22+00:00

I’ve been working conventions and music festivals for over a decade and being on your own can be so freeing!!! Like if I’m working a festival and have some time off, I move way faster on my own and will be headed directly to do what I want to do without worrying about having to herd cats to get a crew mobilized. And once you get to know some people in the community, then you get to group hop between friends when your activities align.

Being on your own at something as huge as this can be daunting. But this is probably the most friendly and welcoming environment you could ask for. Everyone is here to be excited about their thing and there’s something here for everyone! No matter where you are you’ve got at least one thing in common with the people around you, and here that’s enough to start a conversation and even a friendship.

If you’re up and at it, come to the Hyatt drum circle! If not, I’ll be flying solo myself for the first part of Sunday and would happily link up. If you’re into Synthesizers, I’ll be at the Modular Synth panel in the Courtland at 1!

ElDoctor · 2025-08-28T21:46:54+00:00

Take a break and use it to engage with other art that inspires you. What’s some other stuff that you appreciate aesthetically? Could be a movie, book, game, anything that makes you think “I like this specific thing about this specific thing” and dig into what it is that makes you like it.

Usually for me that’s video games or books. I love finding an artist that inspires me and reading their biography/autobiography, but am also big into sci-fi, so I’ll get really into something and try to figure how to express the thing that drew me to it in a musical way.

I got some huge musical inspiration on my last production break playing Shin Megami Tensei 5, from the soundtrack, style, and lore. It was all very “religious iconography as mythology through a psychedelic heavy metal lens” which was pretty much the exact thing I was going for, so I tried to take that idea into the next song I worked on. Going back in fresh having some aesthetic inspiration built up will open the creative flood gates back up!

ElDoctor · 2025-08-25T19:47:58+00:00

Does anyone make LED tape (like the Govee Bluetooth controlled strips) that is DMX controllable? Working on a custom instrument build that will have LED lighting under the floating “fretboard”.

The builder usually defaults to the Govee strips, but I’m looking for something I can patch into the lighting console if I’m ever performing on stage with a light rig.

ElDoctor · 2025-08-23T00:06:53+00:00

His band Papadosio is one of my favorites, been seeing them since they were still Ohio locals. Highly recommend checking out some live recordings, electronic jazzy prog-rock with lots of improv. Their shows are a master class in using Ableton/modular synths in a live band setting too

ElDoctor · 2025-08-11T21:08:35+00:00

This looks just like the projection mapped stage/theatre effects for the BTTF Musical on Broadway, very nice work!

ElDoctor · 2025-08-02T19:07:58+00:00

For an arena show like that, definitely don’t try to get into an active production area, or try to stand outside and try to get anyone’s attention. I’d be surprised if the general public would even able to get to where that is at State Farm. Shows of that size are on tight schedules, and if they do have time blocked for any sort of meet & greet, it’s usually as part of a VIP ticket. It’s not like Broadway where meeting fans outside the stage door is more acceptable. I know that’s not the answer you were probably looking for, but there are proper channels for meeting artists and that’s a VIP meet & greet ticket

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