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Getting started

Requirements

  • TouchDesigner with POPs. This release is tested on TouchDesigner 2025.33230.
  • A GPU with hardware ray tracing on Windows: an NVIDIA RTX card. AMD Radeon RX 6000 and newer also have hardware ray tracing and should work, but are not tested. On macOS, where TouchDesigner has no hardware ray tracing, the Pathtracer still works but much more slowly: keep scenes small there.
  • For the OptiX denoiser: Windows and an NVIDIA GPU.
  • For the DLSS denoiser: Windows, an NVIDIA RTX GPU with a current driver, and the DLSS plugin DlssTOP.dll that comes with the Pathtracer.

The files

File What it is
Pathtracer.tox The renderer.
PT_GEO.tox Places a POP in the scene, with a material.
PT_MAT.tox A material.
PT_LIGHT.tox An area light.
DlssTOP.dll The DLSS plugin, needed only for the DLSS method.

Drag the .tox files into your network from the file browser, or put them into a Palette folder and drag them from there.

A first scene

This builds a sphere on a floor under a rectangular light.

  1. The sphere. Create a Sphere POP with a radius of 0.5 and wire it into a PT GEO. Create a PT MAT and drag it onto the PT GEO's Material parameter. Give the material a Color, and set the PT GEO's Translate Y to 0.5 so the sphere sits on the floor.
  2. The floor. Create a Grid POP with a size of 6 × 6 and wire it into a second PT GEO. Set that PT GEO's Rotate X to −90 so the grid lies flat, and give it its own PT MAT.
  3. The light. Add a PT LIGHT, set its Translate to 0, 3, 0 and its Rotate X to −90, so it hangs above the sphere and faces down.
  4. The camera. Add a Camera COMP, set its Translate to 0, 1.5, 5 and its Rotate X to −12.
  5. The renderer. Add the Pathtracer in the same network and drag the camera onto its Camera parameter. Its Geometry / Lights parameter is *, so it finds the PT GEOs and the PT LIGHT beside it on its own.
  6. The image. Connect a Null TOP to the Pathtracer's first output, Color.

By default the image has the size of the project's main panel. To choose a size, turn off Use Panel Resolution and set Resolution.

The first frames are noisy. With the default Method, SVGF, the noise settles within a few frames. For a still image, switch Method to Average and let it run: the image gets cleaner with every frame for as long as nothing changes.

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