Gaea vs TouchDesigner
Gaea
quadspinner.comTouchDesigner
derivative.caSide by side
| Figure | Gaea | TouchDesigner |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $99/mo | $300/mo |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 7 | 7 |
| Spec score · Visual Effects Software | 8.1 (#10) | 7.8 (#18) |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Integrations | Gaea provides bridges for Unreal Engine and Houdini; the Gaea2Houdini plugin requires a Professional or Enterprise license. | Derivative lists interoperability with Ableton Live, Max/MSP, Substance Designer, Notch, vvvv, OpenFrameworks, Resolume, and Unity. |
| Purpose | Gaea is a terrain design platform for VFX, games, and virtual production. | TouchDesigner is a real-time 2D and 3D interactive animation product for authoring interactive art, media, and visualization. |
| Support | Support, maintenance, and minor updates are included at no additional cost, and the company says it does not offer a guaranteed support SLA. | Forum Support is listed for all license types, while Pro includes six hours of direct support by email or phone. |
Plans
Gaea
- Indie$99 a month
- Professional$199 a month
- Enterprise$299 a month
- Community EditionFree
- Indie$99, paid once
- Professional$199, paid once
- Enterprise$299, paid once
TouchDesigner
- Educational$300 a month
- Commercial$600 a month
- Pro$2,200 a month
- Non-CommercialFree
- Educational$300, paid once
- Commercial$600, paid once
- Pro$2,200, paid once
In their own words
Gaea
Gaea is a Windows terrain design application for VFX, games, and virtual production. It builds terrain from procedural forms, imported data, or hand-drawn elements, then applies simulations for erosion, debris, glaciers, rivers, snow, and vegetation. It can produce terrain-aware color, textures, masks, material zones, vegetation data, and flow maps. Exports include heightfields, meshes, point clouds, textures, masks, and other terrain data. Bridges connect Gaea with Unreal Engine and Houdini; the Gaea2Houdini plugin requires a Professional or Enterprise license. Gaea also offers node-based compositing and a hybrid render engine.
The Community Edition is free for non-commercial use. The listed perpetual-license prices are $99 a month for Indie, $199 a month for Professional, and $299 a month for Enterprise; each is described as a one-time price. Gaea requires Windows, an AVX2-capable CPU, and at least 16 GB of RAM. CPU-only operation is supported; GPU compute needs CUDA 12.5 or higher or HIP 6.0 or higher.
TouchDesigner
TouchDesigner is real-time software for creating interactive 2D and 3D animation, art, media, and visualizations. It combines an application engine and interface in one environment, supporting work from prototypes to finished applications. Its control panel features can be used to build custom interfaces for mouse, touchscreen, gestural, and multi-person input. The software supports high-performance media systems, ultra-resolution video playback, custom media servers, and projection mapping with 3D simulation and multi-projector output. Listed integrations include Ableton Live, Max/MSP, Substance Designer, Notch, vvvv, OpenFrameworks, Resolume, and Unity. Communication options include OSC, MIDI, UDP, TCP, ArtNet, DMX, WebSockets, Serial, and MQTT; supported sensors include Kinect Azure, Intel RealSense, Ouster LIDAR, and Stereolabs ZED. TouchDesigner runs on Windows and macOS; current requirements list Windows 10 or 11 and macOS 13 or higher, with GPU requirements. Pricing is freemium: a free Non-Commercial license is restricted to personal, educational, or evaluation use, while listed paid plans are $300 a month for Educational, $600 a month for Commercial, and $2,200 a month for Pro.