Working together

Work inside the Collab Zone and your partners see it as you do it. This page covers what is mirrored, how you follow each other around, and how you show each other things.

What is mirrored

Everything you change in the networks of the Collab Zone that your network editors show:

• Operators: create (COMPs with their children, docked operators, copies, many at once), delete, rename, move, resize, change type.
• Wires, multi-input ones and COMP connectors included.
• Flags: display, render, bypass, lock, cooking, a CHOP's Export flag; the viewer flag with Sync Selection on.
• Parameters: values, menus, toggles, operator references, expressions, bind expressions, modes, pulses.
• Custom parameters: their values, and their definitions: pages, ranges, defaults, menus, help, enable expressions, read-only.
• Operator colour and comment.
• Text and Table DAT content. A DAT whose text changes faster than ten times a second sends its newest text ten times a second, ending on the last.
• Animation COMPs: keys, channels and graphs edited in the Animation Editor, wherever your panes are.
• The Collab Zone COMP's own parameters, wherever your network editor is: custom ones always, built-in ones (a Container's size, a Geometry's transform, the Extensions page) between zones of the same COMP type. Not its name, place, look, flags or wires: those are each side's own.
• The project's FPS and timeline: settings, play and pause, and the current frame. A partner who joins takes the host's.
• Ctrl+Z: undoes your side's last change, which may be one a partner made, and the result is sent like any edit.

Only the networks shown in someone's network editor are watched. A script or an expression that changes an operator in a network nobody shows is not sent; see Known issues. Some things each side keeps for itself on purpose, such as External .tox paths and hardware devices, and an operator tagged TDXCollab:ignore (or with one of your Ignore Tags) is never sent at all: Keep Local and local tools.

Edits at the same moment

Two people changing the same thing at the same moment (a parameter, a DAT's text, a colour, a flag, a position) both end with the one the host handled last. With Pars Read-Only on (Navigate page, on by default), a parameter a partner is dragging is read-only on your side until a second after their last change, so you do not overwrite each other mid-drag.

Renaming, deleting or creating the same operator at the same moment can still leave you with different networks; see Known issues.

Following each other

On the Navigate page, each person chooses for themselves:

• Synced Panes: your network editor follows a partner into the networks of the zone they move to. It has to be on on the side that should follow.
• Follow: with three or more people, the Display Name of the partner to follow. Empty, the default, follows whoever moved last.
• Enter Zone on Join (on): the first time you are in a session after switching Active on, your network editor goes to the Collab Zone.
• Jump to Collab: go to your partner's network now.
• Sync Pos Zoom on Enter: take a partner's position and zoom when you enter the network they are in.
• Sync Pan and Zoom (off): keep your view on a partner's while you both look at the same network. With both of you on, either one's panning moves the other.
• Sync Selection: take a partner's selection and current operator as they change, the parameter page they turn to with them.
• Sync Parameter Page (off): take the parameter page a partner turns to, without Sync Selection.

Seeing each other

• Show Partner Cursor (on): each partner's mouse pointer, with their Display Name, in their Display Color. A partner out of your view gets a small arrow around your own mouse pointing their way; when they are inside a COMP of the network you view, that COMP is outlined in their colour.
• Show Partner Selection (on): the operators a partner has current or selected, marked by a rendered outline, by recolouring the node, or both (Partner Selection Style). A node's own colour comes back afterwards.
• Show Partner View (on): a faint dashed outline over the part of the network each partner's network editor shows.
• Show Partner Activity (on): a small list in a corner of the network editor, each partner in their colour with the network they are in and the parameter they changed last. Click a row to go there. Activity Corner and Activity Margin place it.
• Display Name and Display Color (Customize, You): how your partners see you.

Cursors, outlines and the activity list are drawn over the network editor, not built from operators: nothing to sync, click or save, the same size at any zoom. They follow the network editor you work in. FNSTools' Hub can switch the whole overlay off.

Ping and Summon

• Ping Here marks a spot for everyone: a ring in your colour where your mouse was, for about 1.5 seconds. Whoever views that network with the spot out of view gets an arrow pointing to it; whoever views a network above it sees the ring on the COMP that holds it; anyone elsewhere sees "pinged" on your row of the activity list. Everyone may ping, observers too.
• Summon Everyone Here brings every partner's network editor to the network you are in, at your position and zoom, and rings your spot as it lands. From two levels or more away, their view travels there through the networks on the way (Travel on Summon, on by default, each person's own). The host may always summon; partners only while the host's Partners May Summon is on.

Each person decides what reaches them: with Allow Pings off, a partner's ping is only a line in your status bar; with Allow Summons off, a summon leaves you where you are and the status bar says who summoned you where. Nobody else is told.

Both are on the chip's right-click, in the TDXCollab window and on the Navigate page as pulses, so a button, a MIDI controller or a script can press them. Ping Hotkey and Summon Hotkey give each a key combination of your own, written as modifiers then a key: alt.shift.p. Some combinations TouchDesigner or the system keeps for itself; if one does nothing, pick another.

Split panes

Every network editor that shows a network of the zone is watched, focused or not, so an edit in any of them syncs. Your presence (cursor, view, where your partners' Synced Panes take them) follows the network editor you have focused. Clicking into a Textport, a Parameters pane or an Animation Editor does not move you. More than four networks shown at once: see Known issues.