Adding and managing components

Preparing component files for use in Hippotizer

TouchDesigner components that can be run inside Hippotizer are called tox components and are
files with a *.tox extension, they are produced by TouchDesigner by selecting any container in a
project and selecting “Save component .tox”

To be recognised by Hippotizer, all component .tox files must be placed into the same folder, the
folder should have the following path:

This folder will be automatically created by Hippotizer after the engine is run at least once, but you
can create it yourself if it is not there.

Component Management

To ensure that the files remain in a specified order in the system and to be able to know what DMX
value will load a certain file, the files must be prepended with a number, like these:

01_MyFirstComponent.tox
02_MySecondComponent.tox
03_YetAnotherComponent.tox

By doing this, a dmx value of 2 will always select the second file.

Using Folders

In addition to just placing files in the TouchEngine folder, you can also place folders in there. In this
case the folder name must have a number at the start just like the files, and in this case the system
will use the name of the folder (excluding the number) as the name that appears in the list in
Hippotizer.

When using a folder as an entry, the system will look for the first file inside the folder that ends in
“.tox” and use this as the component that should be loaded for this entry. The name of the “.tox” file does not have to match the folder name at all.

A folder entry can contain any assets needed by your component such as images, movies etc.. It also means that you can include a custom version of the TouchEngine for your component to use if required .