Touchdesigner & Polycam Point Clouds: Pt. 2 The Energy Wave Effect

Using any lidar-equipped smartphone (I use an iPhone 13 Pro Max in the example video) and the Polycam App you can scan anything in your environment and use that data to create beautiful point cloud artwork in Touchdesigner. I scanned a sculpture by itself using Photogrammetry Mode, and my entire living room using LiDAR Mode. See Part 1.

This tutorial covers a technique called masking that allows us to manipulate some parts of the cloud but not others. The end result is this "energy wave" passing through our points.

I cover some concepts needed to understand changing a 2D image to manipulate its projection into 3D space. It's a little bit of a confusing concept, which is why I wanted to spend some time on it. Getting a thorough understanding of RGB info being used to generate XYZ (Cartesian) coordinates will open the entire world of what can be done with point clouds.

[JackSirkett-pper]

Thanks SO much for this! Really love how you explain these concepts in a lot of detail. Keep up the great work.

[heyonethere]

Thanks! Amazing simple way to work with particles, what i doesnt know before!

[Flor-lycg]

Great tutorial, right speed, to the point and usefull information. Thank you

[craizyai]

great tutorial thanks! Is it possible to get rid of the original object and only leave visible the energy wave?

[pataguan]

Excelente, muchas gracias por compartir, una consulta, que parámetros son críticos para mantener un buen rendimiento y ojalá obtener la mayor fluidez posible en la visualización. Me refiero a los fps. SLDS

[projekt_FK]

hey, at 8:45 you attached the constant and Add, and then the poinitcloud dissapears, I did the same and I have no clue how to get it to show up again do you know what could be causing this?
thanks

[EKEKtekno]

I am using a Comp to multiply the constant TOP with the pointcloud file.
My pointcloud will only move between the values 0. and 1. and nothing happens when I go over those values.... why is that?