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The Visual Cast

VC | EP25 - Function Store / Dániel Molnár - Tools for Noobs, Functions For Pros & Plugins For All

For Episode 25 we have the great and powerful Dániel Molnár aka  @FunctionStore  ! For those not familiar with Daniel, he is the developer of the extremely powerful Function store tools, a collection of  @TouchDesignerOfficial  hacks and tools that help improve workflows as well as manipulate the default behavior of TD, a must have tool for any TD user. Dan is also a talented artist and musician and performs super inspiring audio/visual shows, go check out his most recent performance Sanity Check on his Youtube! In our convo, we get into Dans origins growing up in Hungary and studying Electrical Engineering , being a music nerd from a young age, getting into programing and consumer electronics, moving to Berlin during the pandemic and being introduced and engrossed in TouchDesigner , him starting to develop tools for touchdesigner and how it felt to be invited and honored with an insession invite by derivative, solving problems through supporting and developing tools , what it means to be an audiovisual artist , the nature of the universe being random, but is it random? Lastly we dive into the function master's involvement with  @ledpulse-technologies  a volumetric LED module, we also take a look at the software Daniel built for it. For Dan’s SET, we jump into his unbelievable touchdesigner projects, starting with a suite of his tools made for making mind blowing visuals, including the ComplexOP and its many use cases, The layer separator and its extremely useful exploding ability as well as the complexFractal and its fractal exploring ability. We then jump into FNS and explore the functionStore toolkit and its amazing functionality. I love Daniel and his mind is fascinating to explore. After recording this episode I was instantly a Fumctionstore Tool convert and haven't looked back since, so go download it now. *Unfortunately the first half of the podcast got a bit messed up, thankfully there was a backup, the audio and visual is still intact but the bells and whistles aren’t on display until the SET portion where things pick up! Check out Daniels channels, his Patreon, his music and all the links BELOW- https://www.patreon.com/function_store/posts https://www.youtube.com/@FunctionStore https://www.instagram.com/function.str/ https://www.functionstore.xyz/ https://open.spotify.com/artist/3S5SlH4EwJDYgMOr3i26Rf?si=pTT4TkGqTNe7RXFpurJZ8A FunctionStore Tools - https://github.com/function-store/FunctionStore_tools Sanity Check Audio/Visual Experince - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIB1Ew7who4 LEDPulse - https://www.ledpulse.com/ Chapters: 00:00:00 - Intro 00:03:17 - Customizing the Touch Designer Interface 00:15:42 - Origins of Musical Inspiration 00:23:39 - From Music to Code: Finding Creative Expression 00:31:14 - Discovering Touch Designer through Visuals 00:39:09 - Learning from Other Artists 00:46:47 - Reflections on Life and Growth 00:54:33 - Workshop Experience and "Greg the GOD" 01:02:16 - Frustration and Motivation for Developing Tools 01:12:30 - SET - Tools & Techniques/ComplexOP 01:22:00 - SET - Tools & Techniques/LayerSeprator 01:36:26 - SET - Tools & Techniques/Instanced Trails 1:40:10 - SET - Tools & Techniques/Fractal Generator 01:43:38 - SET - FNS/Intro to Function Store Tools 02:00:00 - SET - FNS/Making TD more Efficient 02:07:28 - SET - FNS/Searching for Operators in Tools 02:15:53 - SET - FNS/Organizing Python Code with Extensions 02:31:45 - Unique Position as a Musician and Audio Visual Artist 02:39:37 - LEDPulse 02:45:20 - LEDPulse community patch overview 02:56:34 - The Philosophy of Data Input and Expression The Visual Cast Podcast is a weekly, recorded live visual podcast, where we interview some of the best, most influential and most talented visual artists from around the world! We break up the interview with the "set", an interactive portion of the cast where the guest chooses what they want to share with us!! It can be anything from a live generative visuals set to a show and tell of a past project, or in this case a look at FunctionStore Tools and amazing TouchDesigner workflows. Please like and subscribe & join us next week for another episode! Follow us @thevisualcast to find out who next week's guest is! If you enjoyed this podcast, please head on over to Apple Podcasts and Spotify and give us a review!! Intro/Outro music by Mantismash https://www.instagram.com/mantismash Follow the Cast https://www.instagram.com/thevisualcast https://www.facebook.com/thevisualcast Follow Alon Hammer/REM https://www.instagram.com/remvisualart https://www.facebook.com/remvisualart https://remvisuals.com Thank you so much for watching and again a massive thanks to Daniel for coming on!

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