TouchDesigner components · Pathtracer 2.2
Path tracing for TouchDesigner.
Render your POP geometry with physically based light: soft shadows, glass, metal and area lights, lit by HDRI maps, and denoised in real time.
Four components for TouchDesigner 2025.33230 · denoising with SVGF, OptiX or NVIDIA DLSS · MIT licensed
The components
Pathtracer
The renderer. Point it at a camera, and it renders every PT GEO, PT LIGHT and POP next to it, lights them with an HDRI, and denoises the result.
PT GEO
Places geometry in the scene: wire in any POP, move it like a Geometry COMP, and give it a material.
PT MAT
A physically based material: colour, metal, roughness, glass with absorption and dispersion, clear coat, emission, textures and Substance.
PT LIGHT
An area light: a rectangle, circle, ring or point, or any shape you wire in, with its own colour and texture.
Denoising
Progressive averaging for stills, SVGF for motion, and the NVIDIA OptiX and DLSS Ray Reconstruction denoisers.
The guide
How a scene is put together: geometry, materials, lights and environment, camera and depth of field, outputs.
First render in three steps
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1
Get it on Patreon
Download the Pathtracer and its PT components.
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2
Build a scene
Wire a POP into a PT GEO, give it a PT MAT, and add a PT LIGHT and a Camera COMP.
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3
Render
Put a Pathtracer next to them and set its Camera. The image appears on its first output.
About the Pathtracer¶
The Pathtracer renders POP geometry the way light behaves: light bounces between surfaces, shadows are soft, metal and glass reflect and refract, coloured surfaces tint their surroundings, and emitting surfaces light the scene. An HDRI map can surround the scene and light it.
A scene is built from four components: the Pathtracer renders, PT GEO places geometry, PT MAT describes materials, and PT LIGHT adds area lights. Plain POPs can be rendered as they are.
Path tracing is noisy at first. The Pathtracer cleans the image with one of four methods: it can add up frames for a perfect still, or denoise every frame for animation with SVGF, NVIDIA OptiX or NVIDIA DLSS Ray Reconstruction.
This documentation assumes you know TouchDesigner and its POPs.
- Getting started: requirements and a first scene.
- Guide: geometry, materials, lights, camera, denoising and outputs.
- Components: every component and parameter.
Documented release: Pathtracer 2.2, tested on TouchDesigner 2025.33230.
Start path tracing.
The Pathtracer is available to patrons on Patreon, MIT licensed.
Get Pathtracer on Patreon →