Submission Guidelines

These are the requirements for all assets uploaded to ChopChopChop. This document will be updated continuously, so please check this page always before you upload a new asset.

Last updated: December 4, 2018

Introduction
The goal of ChopChopChop is to provide TouchDesigner developers with professional assets, which they can easily implement in their projects. This means that every asset should work immediately without errors on a new computer, and it should be clear to people implementing your asset how to work with it, and what all the possible settings and options of the asset are. So in order to have a consistent high-quality standard of all assets on ChopChopChop, we will review every asset before publishing. As the projects made in TouchDesigner can be extremely varied, we need feedback from the TouchDesigner community how we can best update these submission guidelines. So consider this a living document, and please let us know how we can improve these guidelines.

1.General
– Assets must be complete and fully functional as advertised upon submission.
– Submissions that do not perform and function as advertised will be rejected.
– Assets can not throw any generic errors after startup. Any errors present in your projects should only be those that are from caught and handled exceptions.
– Assets must not direct customers to other online stores.

2.Files and Project structure
– TouchDesigner projects must be uploaded as .tox files, or .zip file if the project includes assets (see below)
– All file paths must be relative
– All filenames (also all media files in the project) only contain the English alphabet.
– Assets must open and start without any errors in the current official release of TouchDesigner.
– If you have asset files in your project next to the .tox file , they have to be placed in subdirectories next to the .toxfile. Each subdirectory has to be clearly named depending on what files it contains (textures, audio, dll, etc..). In this case the whole project must be packed as a .zip file.
– All of the project content must reside within the first folder in the .zip file. This folder must have the same name as the asset submission.
– Please test your asset before submitting it, by unzipping it to a new location on your (or even better, another) computer, to see if all the included assets and file paths are set correctly.

3.Settings
– All settings and options of your asset must be implemented as custom parameters in the top-level COMP of the .tox file.

4.Documentation
– Every asset needs clear documentation, so any user who uses this asset for the first time, can see what the possibilities and options are. Depending on the complexity of your asset, this documentation can be in Text DATs in your project, or in a separate PDF file.
– If after reading through your documentation, there is not a clear understanding of how to use your asset, your submission may be rejected.
– Documentation must be in English and free from spelling/grammatical errors.
– Documentation must include a support email for users to contact you.
– An included demo scene can be very helpful in explaining how to implement the asset.

5.Units & Scale
– Use a consistent scale throughout the asset. Length unit is 1m.
– Meshes should be at a 1 unit : 1 meter  scale.

6.Scripts & expressions
– Use absolute time-based expressions (such as absTime.seconds or $AT) instead of frame-based expressions to to prevent animation hiccups and to allow users to change the number of frames per second.

7.Code
– All submitted code must be commented and readable with no spelling/grammatical errors.
– All classes, functions and variables must all have English names that reflect their intended purpose or use case.
– All comments must be in English
– Commented code is not an alternative to proper documentation.

8.Python
– If the asset relies on importing external Python modules, the asset should report a clear & userfriendly message when these modules are not available.

9.Textures & Materials
– All texture files need to be in a lossless compression format such as PNG or TIFF. Submissions that include JPGs will be rejected.
– All media files which are not used should be removed from the asset.

10.Screenshots
– At least three screenshots are required for each asset submission.
– screenshots must be 1920×1080, in png format, and be named <Assetname>_screenshot.png

11.Video
– Videos of your asset in action must be submitted as URLs hosted on either Vimeo or Youtube.