This is a consolidated archive of 19 experimental TouchDesigner oscilloscope systems made across several years. The release gathers multiple oscilloscope, diffusion, audio-reactive geometry systems, particle, and XY-drawing builds into one larger study pack. You just plug an audio-source, and let the thing evolve.
Available through: https://uisato.studio/tools?collection=oscilloscope-xy
Am I insane? Niche question for any female VJs if you're out there. I do live visuals for events and have done this festival in August twice before. I will be able to sit down the entire time. My shifts last year were.
Obviously I'm thinking there's no chance I can/should work until 4am, and am looking to find cover on friday/saturday 11pm-4am. But is working outside in a field for 8 hours for 4 days in a row stupid? Its under shade, not in full sun.
and of course its a LOUD place... I mean we're at the back so not NEXT to the speakers but of course its a festival...
I will have to take steps to make sure I don't sleep in a tent: hotel or camper van for sure as I got cold last year, and I'm already peeing like 5 times a night at 10 weeks.
I hear you have lots of energy at 24 weeks.. I mean surely loads of women have to work intensely and manage it?
Thanks for any tips!
silly question, but if I wanted to take a video I found on YouTube of someone dancing, take their silhouette and use it for my own work, is that copyright or is it legal?
Apple approved our drug visualizer as long as we didn't directly reference any.
Free forever, hoping to see some good FEEEEEEDBACKKKKK.
MacOS version should be approved later this week, enjoy
100% Frameless
i see a bunch of people running NOTCH all of the time just to like, recolor and add some "simmery blur" to a live IMAG feed. in many cases, Resolume is certainly capable of doing whatever NOTCH is being used for. im just curious, what is the reasoning behind reaching for another piece of software (that also needs a dongle lmao) instead of just building the look in Resolume ? (no shade, literally just curious)
I am working on an effect plugin for Resolume, soon to be available on Juicebar. It’s a planet with all kinds of custom controls. Or a UFO? What do you think?
Generative visuals, motion graphics, optical art and live visuals built in real time using parametric grids, procedural animation, MIDI and audio-reactive controls. Export in SVG, PDF, PNG or ProRes video directly from the app.
App Store:
https://apps.apple.com/fr/app/polagone/id6755683557?utm_source=chatgpt.com
I've been experimenting with algorithms that tries to separate sounds and then cluster them together, the idea is to give a trippy synesthetic experience when those clusters are mapped to visuals and keep a sense of cohesion.
In this demo I projected the data coming from a track into a 3d space (I used the Godot game engine), then a real-time clustering algorithm groups the different sounds together. Although the whole pipeline is not real-time yet.
I recently started experimenting with audio related analysis and I'm no expert in audio analysis or vjing so I'm not sure if this can give some advantage over existing software. Do you think something like this could be useful for vjing by linking the clusters to different visuals?
I built a VJ tool for total beginners to escape tutorial hell. It includes a guided tutorial and starter clips so you can get mixing in under 2 minutes. No install. Runs in Chrome/Firefox.
Check it out here: https://blackhawk.amvanbaren.workers.dev/
Still a work in progress, so I’d love to hear what feels intuitive, confusing, or unexpected.
Hi! Just wanted to share my latest generative loop. It's 4K, based on sine waves and custom glow shaders. What do you think about the particle scale?
Hi u/everyone! i've been trying to take my learning to higher levels, trying to project at home, but I can´t find a proper way to practice a long duration live set, to make it more engaging, dynamic and not so monotone.
I find myself looking for ways to have like different visuals in one set but i can't find any good tutorials, I understand I could have madmapper to map, and choose between saved or filmed visuals(honestly haven't tried it because its payed, but i want like a live workflow projection, that can change in time. How do you guys do it? any recommendations? Are there any free tools to try, maybe plug-ins im missing? Or should i just get mad mapper (or another program?) I'm open to any suggestion, really appreciate!
I have plans to buy the commercial license at some point, when I get better knowledge, so i can start VJing at gigs or whatever. But right now its expensive for me haha.
Please HELP! :P
Ps: hope i could explain myself properly haha
I know absolutely nothing about projectors / VJing, but I am looking to pull together some simple visuals for a very small bush rave.
My initial idea was to do some very simple projection mapping of trees around the DJ. The DJ booth itself will be under a standard tent canopy.
I’ve also considered getting a backdrop to project onto instead, but I feel like it might look janky(?) since the largest screen we could realistically display would just be the size of the tent canopy wall and obvi not a completely flat surface as it would be a makeshift backdrop.
I’m on a budget of $150–$~200 Cad and have 3 main questions:
Thanks in advance!!
Unlike the players of the past, VIBE OS - Artearnbadge.com lets you transform any image into a reactive spectrum. It’s pure generative art: you provide the image, and my code makes it pulse and vibrate in 3D.
Generator : https://artearnbadge.com/vibe-os/image-to-3d/generator-local.php
Check it out: https://artearnbadge.com/vibe-os/image-to-3d/ Would love to hear your feedback on the performance!
Hey everyone! I built this tool that transforms any avatar or image into a reactive 3D spectrum. It’s powered by WebGL/Three.js and supports file uploads, microphone input, and screen sharing for total reactivity. You can manipulate the camera with your mouse and tweak pixel density, backgrounds, and generators.
We just pulled off a small private modern piano concert for a 100+ audience with immersive projection across two walls at 90°, driven by 3 projectors.
The show worked. The audience was pulled in.
Here's the stuff I wish I'd known before starting.
Aimed at people doing small to mid-size immersive concerts and performances without a giant budget, a giant crew, or six months to prototype.
-------------
1. You don't need 360°. You need 140°.
People hear "immersive" and imagine projection on every wall, the ceiling, the floor, the bartender, maybe the dog outside. You probably don't need that.
Human binocular vision is ~120°. If the visuals fill 140° from where the audience sits, the experience reads as fully immersive.
Don't light the ceiling - or the floor - or the wall behind the audience - unless it REALLY matters.
Save the lumens for what people actually stare at.
2. The corner is a curse AND a blessing.
Our space used two walls meeting at 90°.
That geometry hates normal flat panoramic content. If you throw one ultra-wide image across the corner, it can look like a giant TV bent in the middle. From any seat that is not perfectly centered, the seam becomes obvious.
But the same corner becomes powerful if you let it carry meaning.
It can be the corner of a real-feeling room, the edge of an aquarium you're diving into, the divider between two train windows. Treat the corner as a feature, not a seam to hide.
3. Mount projectors with overlap, correct in software.
Two projectors lighting adjacent walls geometrically want to be mounted in the same spot — which is usually impossible.
Don’t try to tile the projectors perfectly in the physical world. It becomes a trap. Even projectors from the same manufacturer will have slightly different brightness, color, lens behavior, and geometry.
Mount them practically. Give yourself some deliberate overlap. Then fix the geometry in mapping software and blend edges to have smooth image across all surfaces - corner included.
For drop ceilings, look into scissor clamps / T-bar clamps. They grip the ceiling grid without damaging the tiles and are fully reversible. For a temporary event, this matters.
4. Cover the walls with cheap white/grey fabric.
Wall paint has color cast, texture, and patches you'll spend hours grading around. For a one-night event, ~$70 of photo-backdrop muslin (white or light grey) and a bag of corkboard pins gives you a uniform surface in 30 minutes.
Left - cheap photo backdrop. Right - a wall painted dark green.
5. Contrast beats resolution.
Audiences read contrast before they read pixels. A high-contrast 720p image at venue scale looks better than a flat 4K one.
If the image is muddy, low-contrast, and washed out, the audience won’t care that it was technically 4K. Remember - immersive videos augment performance and create atmosphere.
6. Some music doesn't want visuals.
Dense technical music — complex jazz, virtuoso solo work — fills its own perceptual space. Adding visuals competes for attention without adding meaning. Cinematic, slow-decay, atmospheric music is what visuals help. If you're choosing repertoire, choose music with room in it.
We got lucky here: moody, cinematic, atmospheric piano music by Alex Syedin that genuinely benefits from projection.
7. Visuals need a thread of story.
Yes, visuals are mesmerizing. Mesmerizing. Humans are helpless in front of moving light.
But there is a difference between visual stimulus and visual experience.
Strobes, abstract geometry, fractals are visual magnets that the audience won't remember as anything more than "there were flickering lights."
Even a thin narrative — a season change, a journey out of Earth — makes the visuals stick.
For each piece, define in one sentence: “What is happening here emotionally?”
If you can answer that, the visuals get easier and better.
8. Audiences either watch or they listen. Not both.
This is the most counterintuitive lesson. Anything cinematic — camera movement, faces, tight sync to musical beats — pulls people into video-mode and out of music-mode. For immersive accompaniment to live music, you want conditions that drift, not events that announce themselves. Camera movement is the loudest "watch me" signal cinema has.
For live music, avoid visuals that constantly say “look at me.” Create a visual state the audience can live inside while still listening.
9. Three projectors in a row means you’re effectively making a 16:3 show
This is where many people first discover pain.
Three horizontal HD projectors behave like an ultra-wide canvas with aspect ratio 16:3 (3 × 16:9 = 48:9 = 16:3). Sounds simple until you try to make content for it:
It's tempting to author three independent 16:9 videos and route one to each projector. Don't. In practice, that is brutally hard to author, synchronize, revise, and perform live.
One ultra-wide master timeline is dramatically easier to author, sync, and revise.
10. Let the audio drive timing.
Two important aspects here.
First, live concert visuals are not the same as a music video.
In a music video, every beat can flash or change. In a live concert, that can become exhausting fast. If the visuals react to every accent, the projection starts competing with the music - not what we want for an immersive video that supports the music.
Second, trusting your ears to find peaks and valleys may be suboptimal.
Intuitive approach is to listen to a piece, get a feel for its shape, and time visuals to where the music feels like it builds, peaks, and rests. This is wrong more often than you'd think — what you hear and what's actually in the audio aren't the same thing. Your ears smooth things over.
Drop your audio file into Audacity (free) or any DAW. You're looking at two things:
Here is the link to the actual piece - for reference.
The quiet tails at the ends of pieces - which is also high-pitched in this example - may be the biggest visual canvases of the show, and most planning ignores them.
Try planning from the data - then compare the impressions.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Projectors
For small spaces, you want something simple, compact, with 2000–4000 lumen output. Short throw is essentially mandatory — otherwise musicians get lit and cast shadows on your projection.
UST (ultra-short-throw) may be cost-prohibitive. Used options on eBay may be noisy, bulky, or come with lamps near end-of-life. Skip anything labeled "home theater" or anything overly smart — you don't need notifications about a Google account mid-performance, firmware prompts, auto-keystone surprises, or sudden re-calibration because the projector decided so.
Simple. Reliable. Enough light. Right resolution. Basic geometry correction. Quiet. That's the whole list.
We ended up renting 3 x Optoma GT2100HDR - perfect fit for our needs.
Connecting projectors to your computer
Trivial question, right? HDMI cable, I suppose?...
Remember, this project LOOKS easy.
Connecting one or two projectors is trivial.
On the third you may find you've run out of ports and need a USB hub. If on Mac, you'll then suddenly discover that DisplayPort MST extended mode isn't supported on macOS — USB hubs can only mirror your desktop, not extend it.
In addition, you may find that:
Many projectors now support Ethernet/WiFi streaming and there are exotic options like attaching a Raspberry Pi to each one — these will all keep you busy for a while.
If you want it to just work: long HDMI cables, hidden behind ceiling tiles. Done.
But remember the length! Rule of thumb for 1080p over HDMI is about 15 meters (50 feet), and even shorter for 4k signal. Beyond that length, you're in the world of NDMI extenders and optic cables.
One more gotcha: there's no standard way in Windows or macOS to play a single video across several monitors unless those monitors are virtually joined into one surface by the GPU (e.g. NVidia Surround). For Surround to work, monitors must be connected directly to the card — USB hubs are not supported.
The good news: for projection mapping you don't need Surround. Projection software handles the multi-output split.
Pick your projection software and accept the pain.
Here is a decent shortlist for multi-projector setups.
HeavyM is easier to start with. Resolume is performance-friendly. TouchDesigner is insanely flexible if you are willing to build.
But here is the catch: none is documented at a level any reasonable engineer would call acceptable. Expect to lose hours to counter-intuitive things that should just be written in the manual (yes, MadMapper, we're looking at you**)**.
Pick early, commit, comb through tutorials, learn it deep, stop comparison-shopping.
Most of these tools have restricted trial versions that are good enough for learning. For the actual show, get a temporary license if available. MadMapper, for example, has rental options.
Also: do not reduce yourself to torrents. Have some self-respect. Rent the license, borrow a license, find a student with an educational one if budget is the issue.
A MIDI controller is not optional.
Driving a multi-projector rig with a trackpad in front of an audience is a uniquely stressful experience.
Especially if the performer talks between pieces, changes timing, pauses, skips, extends, or simply breathes differently than the recording.
You need physical buttons.
Use a MIDI controller.
Not later. From the start. Build your show around live cue control even if you think everything will run in a fixed sequence. Live performance always drifts.
A $50–150 MIDI controller (Akai APC Mini, Korg nanoKONTROL) maps directly into projection software and gives you tactile control that's night-and-day better than clicking around a laptop in a dark booth.
At minimum, you want buttons / pads / keys to:
Pre-map your scene cues to physical buttons. Label them with gaffer tape if needed. Your future self in the booth will thank you.
First, pick a resolution and commit. 1080p (1920×1080 per projector → 5760×1080 total) looks great but may choke laptops driving three outputs. 720p (1280×720 per projector → 3840×720 total) is often indistinguishable at venue scale, much easier to author, and stock footage is dramatically easier to source at that height.
Chopping 4K stock footage down to a 5760×1080 strip leaves you with low effective resolution per crop anyway. Don't overshoot.
Surprisingly, both CapCut and DaVinci Resolve support ultra-wide timelines — though you may need paid features (stabilization, optical flow) to make AI-generated source usable.
Remember: with projection, content clarity, contrast, and emotional fit may matter more than theoretical pixel count.
Stock footage
Remember: normal stock footage is usually 16:9. When you crop it into 16:3, you may lose most of the useful frame. A beautiful 4K shot can become a narrow strip of sky, floor, or empty nothing.
This is real pain. Most AI video tools weren't built for that shape, top out around 21:9, and don't understand your show as a whole.
The workflow that worked for us:
ChatGPT — surprisingly good for thinking through scenes, structuring a visual arc, generating prompts for other tools, and producing 16:3 stills. It won't make videos, but it'll hold context and generate keyframe ideas that stay coherent across a chapter. Stills won't be 720px tall — that's what upscalers are for.
Midjourney — a schizophrenic painter. Doesn't understand story, loves paint. Ask it for a "bonfire" and it may give you something absolutely deranged. With references, strong prompts, and clear start/end logic, it can do miracles. Accepts --ar 16:3 and produces 16:3 video.
https://reddit.com/link/1thct42/video/b9gt94cjy02h1/player
The most useful workflow was:
Those 15–20 second chunks are valuable. If the motion is slow and atmospheric, you can stretch them, blend them, and make them cover much more time.
But remember one very important limitation of all AI generative tools: they are artists, not cameras.
They are designed to create and change. They are not designed to hold a shot perfectly still while modifying only one tiny part of the scene. They have no camera control. Holding the frame still while only a fraction of the scene evolves is a challenge with no reliable, reproducible recipe. Plenty of tutorials suggest prompts that "may" work; none give predictable results.
Which means your AI-generated clips will probably have some combination of:
Plan for cleanup time. Stabilization in post is your friend.
Optical flow has a hard floor.
Resolve, Premiere, and CapCut all do optical-flow interpolation for slowing footage. At 50% they look identical. At 25% the differences emerge. Below ~15% they all collapse — there's no source data for the algorithm to invent between frames. Plan your source clip lengths accordingly: a 5-second clip will stretch to 10 seconds cleanly, to 20 seconds painfully, to 30 seconds not at all.
Test on the actual hardware as early as possible.
A render that looks gorgeous on a laptop will reveal corner-seam artifacts, banding, and horizon-line creasing the moment it hits three projectors meeting at 90°. The day-of discovery is the most common failure mode. Get even rough timing onto the real walls early.
Rehearse.
Sync between visuals and music has to be eyeballed live before an audience sees it. The performer needs to know what's in their peripheral vision, when transitions happen, where visual climaxes land relative to their playing. One full run-through catches 80% of what would have gone wrong. Two catches almost everything.
------------------------------------------------
That's the working set. Every item on this list became a problem because someone (often me) assumed it would just work. None of them just works. Plan for each one.
After even more beers, and a lot of sleepless nights the software is finally starting to take its shape!
I started it off as a simple chaser plugin just to get the feel of how hard it would be to implement it into Resolume, after that testing phase i started to test out other stuff, currently i have the sequencer, a 3D stage builder (im waiting on a friend to make more models so you can build brutal stages, everything is configured i just need the models, if somebody has them pleaseeee send me 😁), also have built a stage view, im still working in the graphics, but the core is there, and if anybody is working with lasers i would love to have a chat because i personally never got interested too much into lights and lasers so i would love some feedback on your workflow because i want to implement them also so that they could be pre programmed in here, pyro alsoo!!
The workflow for now is:
Setup the inputs and outputs in resolume, the program automatically gets all the info, makes a little pre-generated stage in the Stage tab (the sequencer tab is by itself, it has full slice mask, outline, random slices (from the selected in the preset, so if you didnt select some they wont show up), random style (outline or full), fading and bleeding), make a stagebin the Stage Builder, and see how everything is going to look!!
POV shot mixing visuals for 🎶 LYNY - Section.
Catered to a bit more of the darker club vibe but bringing in some of the color to cater to the infravibe! And hey, dats mah wife on the screen!
Content was rotoscoped (with Ae) video footage of my wife spinning on her pole! Mixed live in Arena w/ custom wire effects controlled by Open Stage Control, launchcontrol XL, and a midi fighter spectral.
E: big shout-out to Antic Studios crushing the lasers and lights!
