8-Bit Pixel FX in TouchDesigner

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8-bit FX or pixelation effects are a staple type of visual effect to keep in your toolkit whether you're a VJ, commercial artist, or something else entirely! Despite how easy it is to create in TouchDesigner, many of the ways you can approach this effect are either too power hungry on your system, have difficult control handles, often need a bunch of nodes, or just don't look that good. In this video, Elburz harnesses the Limit TOP to develop a full 8-bit pixelation effect that is easy to use and light on your system.

[@MickySarge]

I am so great full for this video and the discussion in the comments! I purchased an extremely cheap projector to experiment with. It has a resolution of 320x240 and just downscaling videos looks terrible. This should help get things looking a little sharper!

[@TheInteractiveImmersiveHQ]

Sounds like a useful application of the effect! Thanks for watching :)

[@jean-francoisrenaud2649]

Good tip. But the pixels are not square unless source is 1:1. Is there a workaround?
Also, the about 0.2 milliseconds CPU cook for Resolution TOP time seems to depend about the activation of High quality resize. When deactivate this parameter, cooking time is about the same as Limit TOP, so is the look.

[@LucasVogel]

maybe use a fit top with a 1:1 ratio before using the limit method

[@TheInteractiveImmersiveHQ]

Interesting find! I didn't notice that they weren't square pixels. I'm not sure if there's a way to deal with that directly on the Limit TOP, it might be a good RFE to post on the forum, I remember in the past Blur TOP had a similar situation where the X blur was always greater than the Y blur because of aspect ratio. Using Limit TOP will still be a bit more resilient to bugs because you're not dependent on resolution, so you can plug anything in and know it'll work, whereas with Resolution TOP if you set it for something like HD resolution, it probably won't be pixelated enough if you feed in UHD content and similarly it'll be too pixelated if you feed in something lower res.

[@jean-francoisrenaud2649]

@@TheInteractiveImmersiveHQ This is why, in Resolution TOP, it is a good idea to use input resolution to fixed the output resolution. I choose Custom resolution and add the expression me.inputs[0].width/20 and me.inputs[0].height/20, so I know the output will be equivalent to quantize position at 0.05 in a Limit TOP.

[@ta-ya-music]

Beautifully explained

[@TheInteractiveImmersiveHQ]

Thank you! 🙂

[@suiziisu3224]

Beautifully explained!!!

[@TheInteractiveImmersiveHQ]

Glad it was helpful! Thanks for watching :)

[@noahnumberone]

Beautiful 8-bit banana

[@TheInteractiveImmersiveHQ]

Can't live with it, can't live without it!

[@dansparty8266]

thanks elburz this is great!

[@TheInteractiveImmersiveHQ]

No problem! Glad you enjoyed it!

[@williammccormick3787]

Ty!

[@TheInteractiveImmersiveHQ]

Our pleasure! Thanks for watching :)

[@aevin_io]

Thanks fo sharing!

[@TheInteractiveImmersiveHQ]

Our pleasure! Thanks for watching :)

[@rubicomspb]

thanks!

[@TheInteractiveImmersiveHQ]

No problem!

[@enzodiazzingaretti8563]

Any way to add some dithering?

[@TheInteractiveImmersiveHQ]

The best way to approach adding customizable dithering is with GLSL -- trying searching for the Floyd-Steinberg dithering algorithm written in GLSL, it'll give you the "old school" dithering look that you're after. You'll need to make some slight tweaks to make it function in TouchDesigner, which are detailed in this article: nvoid.gitbooks.io/introduction-to-touchdesigner/content/GLSL/12-6-Importing-Shadertoy.html. Hope that helps!

[@DandiDoesIt]

Now add dithering, and we're back in 1991

[@TheInteractiveImmersiveHQ]

Haha you know it!