System Requirements

System requirements for TouchDesigner and TouchPlayer.

Basic Requirements

Older than hereafter specified configurations might work but some features will not be available.

Operating System

• Microsoft Windows 8.1 / Windows 10

• Apple macOS 10.12 and up (See also macOS)

Graphics Cards

A minimum of 1GB GPU memory and use of the most recent Nvidia drivers, AMD drivers or Intel drivers is recommended. TouchDesigner uses OpenGL.

Desktop Cards

• Nvidia GeForce 600 Series Card or better
• AMD HD 7000 Series Card or better

Workstation Cards

• Nvidia Quadro K Series Card or better
• AMD W or V Series Card or better

Integrated Graphics

NOTE: Not all features are supported on integrated video chipsets and there is a lower expectation on overall performance.

• Intel HD4000, HD5000 and above

Input Devices

• A three-button mouse with scroll-wheel is required.

Feature Specific Requirements

• Movie File In TOP - H.264 and H.265 hardware accelerated decoding
  • Windows OS & Nvidia GPU only
• Movie File Out TOP - H.264 and H.265 encoding
  • Windows OS & Nvidia GPU only
• Video Stream Out TOP - Uses H.264 encoding
  • Windows OS & Nvidia GPU only
• Face Track CHOP and Face Track SOP
  • Windows OS & Nvidia RTX GPU only.
  • Mesh fitting using the Face Track SOP requires a compatible mesh file that can be downloaded from external sources.
• Nvidia Background TOP
  • Windows OS & Nvidia RTX GPU only.
• Nvidia Denoise TOP
  • Windows OS & Nvidia RTX GPU only.
• Nvidia Flex
  • Windows OS & Nvidia GPU only
• Nvidia Flow TOP
  • Windows OS & Nvidia GPU only
• Notch TOP - Playback Notch blocks
  • Windows OS
• Scalable Display TOP
  • Windows OS
• CUDA in C++ TOP
  • Windows OS & Nvidia GPU only
• DirectX In TOP and DirectX Out TOP
  • Windows OS & DirectX 9.0 and higher
• Photoshop In TOP
  • Adobe Photoshop CS6 and up
• SVG TOP
  • Windows OS & Nvidia GPU only
• Geometry COMP Texture Instancing
  • Windows OS & Nvidia GPU only
• Window COMP Hardware Frame Lock
  • Windows OS & Nvidia Quadro Sync or AMD S400 only
• Pangolin CHOP - Drive Pangolin lasers through their Beyond software.
  • Windows OS
• RealSense CHOP - Skeleton and face tracking with old legacy RealSense devices.
  • Windows OS
• Kinect 2 Support
  • Windows OS - 8 or 10
  • dedicated USB 3.0 Controller
• Kinect Azure TOP / Kinect Azure CHOP - Body tracking and Player Index support
  • Windows OS
  • Nvidia GPU is recommended, but AMD and Intel graphics cards are now supported. CPU-based option is too slow for most use cases.
• Leap Motion
  • Leap Motion Orion 4.0 SDK - Windows OS
  • Leap Motion Skeletal Tracking v2 SDK - Windows OS or macOS
• NatNet In CHOP - Receives tracking data from OptiTrack systems.
  • Windows OS
• Oculus Rift
  • Windows OS
  • Oculus Rift DK2 or CV1
• OpenVR - HTC Vive or other OpenVR supported HMDs.
  • Windows OS
• ZED - TOP, CHOP, and SOP that access ZED devices.
  • Windows OS

The Graphics Processing Unit. This is the high-speed, many-core processor of the graphics card/chip that takes geometry, images and data from the CPU and creates images and processed data.

An Operator Family that reads, creates and modifies 3D polygons, curves, NURBS surfaces, spheres, meatballs and other 3D surface data.

An Operator Family that creates, composites and modifies images, and reads/writes images and movies to/from files and the network. TOPs run on the graphics card's GPU.

An Operator Family which operate on Channels (a sequence of numbers (Samples)) which are used for animation, audio, mathematics, simulation, logic, UI construction, and data streamed from/to devices and protocols.