FAQ

Do I need TouchDesigner?

Yes. Moonshine is a control surface on top of TouchDesigner — TD is the renderer. You need a TD Commercial or Pro license for any real show; the Non-Commercial license works for evaluation but caps the output resolution.

Does Moonshine require internet access?

No. Everything runs on your LAN. The control plane is WebSocket between the operator browsers and the TD host; the preview is WebRTC peer-to-peer. There is no Moonshine cloud service.

We don’t see your show data. There is no telemetry-by-default upload to us.

Can I use Moonshine on Mac?

The browser side runs on any modern OS — Mac, Windows, Linux, iPad, all fine for the operator workstations.

The TouchDesigner host side currently requires Windows. macOS host support is on the roadmap but not currently available.

How many simultaneous operators are supported?

The product is built for teams of 2–8 operators. Larger sessions work but the room for everyone’s cursor to be readable in a shared viewport runs out around a dozen. There’s no hard cap.

How many projectors can it drive?

Up to 32 HD outputs or 8× 4K outputs through Decklink or equivalent. The bottleneck is GPU at high counts — measure before committing for a specific rig.

What happens if my browser crashes during a show?

Nothing. The TouchDesigner host is the source of truth; the browser is a thin client. Reopen the browser, the connection re-establishes, and the show continues. The projector output never depended on your browser being alive.

If you crash during an edit operation that hadn’t been committed (a vertex drag in progress), the in-flight change is lost — but a committed warp save persists.

What happens if TouchDesigner crashes during a show?

The show stops. There is no failover host in the current architecture — TouchDesigner is the renderer, and if it dies, the projectors lose signal.

For shows where uptime is critical, your venue’s existing TD setup likely already has the redundancy strategy you need; Moonshine doesn’t change those decisions.

Can I use my own custom TouchDesigner network?

The Moonshine TD extensions are drop-in components that bolt onto an existing TD project. They expose hooks for your custom rendering logic to integrate.

How do collaborators in different locations work together?

The collaboration model is LAN-local — Moonshine doesn’t currently support multi-site operators sharing a session over the internet.

For remote collaboration, the typical pattern is a single TouchDesigner host at the venue with operators on the venue LAN, plus a VPN-tunneled operator from a remote location. Latency over a VPN is usable but degrades the live cursor experience compared to a real LAN.

Is there a free tier?

The current beta is invite-only for studios shipping shows. There isn’t a public free tier yet. Pricing for the eventual public release hasn’t been finalized.

Does Moonshine work with NDI?

Yes. Anything TouchDesigner can drive as an output works — NDI, Decklink, native display, HDMI. The Moonshine UI doesn’t care which physical interface the projector signal travels over.

Can I run multiple shows from one TouchDesigner host?

Yes, by saving multiple project files and opening the one for the current show. There isn’t a “multi-show” mode within a single running TouchDesigner — that’s a TD-level operation.

How do I report a bug?

If you’re in the beta, you have a direct Slack or email channel to the team. Otherwise, the public bug reporting channel will be announced with the public release.

How do I request a feature?

Same channels as bug reports. The product is being shaped by what the beta studios actually need, so feature requests carry real weight during this phase.