FNSTools Plus
Nearly all of FNSTools is free, MIT, and stays that way. A few tools are how the work gets paid for. This page is the whole story — what is behind the gate, what unlocks it, and what it does to your machine.
Nearly everything
The core registries and nearly every tool in the catalogue.
- No account, no sign-in. Nothing phones home, and there is no telemetry.
- Source on GitHub. Read it, fork it, use it in commercial work.
- Every machine you own — and every machine you set up for someone else.
- Free stays free. A tool that is free today does not become paid later.
A few tools
Ordinary packages in the same catalogue, with one difference: the server checks that you are entitled before it sends the bytes.
- Visible, not hidden. Plus tools sit in the picker and the docs like any other, marked Plus.
- Two ways in. A Patreon membership, or a licence key bought outright.
- Same rails. One release, one manifest, the same sha256 verification, the same updater.
What is in Plus right now
This list is short on purpose, and it is generated from the same catalogue the installer reads — so it cannot advertise something that does not ship. Every one of these has a full documentation page you can read before deciding anything.
Two ways to unlock
Patreon
Ongoing support. Your tier decides which Plus tools you get, and they stay current for as long as you are a member.
- Covers more than the toolkit — the same membership reaches the other Function Store tools.
- New Plus tools appear as they ship, without buying anything again.
- Connect once per machine, from inside TouchDesigner.
Buy one tool
A one-time purchase for a single tool, redeemed with a key. No membership, no recurring charge.
- One key per tool — hold as many as you have bought, and add or remove them individually.
- How many machines a key covers is stated where you buy it.
- Redeemed in the same place as the Patreon connection.
Unlocking, step by step
- Install the toolkit as usual. Plus tools need no special installer — they are rows in the same catalogue. The three steps are here.
-
Open
FNS_Updaterinside the toolkit container. Its sign-in parameters are where all of this happens — there is no separate account tool to install. - Pulse Sign In, or paste a licence key and pulse Redeem. Signing in opens your normal browser, you approve there, and the tab hands the result back to TouchDesigner by itself.
- Pick your tools. The Plus packages you are entitled to stop being locked in the picker and install like anything else.
What it does to your machine
Worth being precise about, because the answer is short and it is the part people are right to ask about.
-
The credential never touches your project. It goes into the Windows
Credential Manager or the macOS Keychain, under your user account. It is not in the
.toe, not in a.tox, and not in a file beside them — so a project you hand to a collaborator carries no key of yours. - TouchDesigner never holds a Patreon token. It holds an opaque token that means nothing anywhere else, and that can be revoked.
- The check is on the bytes, not the buttons. Entitlement is decided by the server before a file is served. Nothing is "unlocked" by editing a parameter, which is also why a locked tool in your picker is a real lock rather than a grey button.
- Sign out whenever. One button; the credential is deleted from the keystore.
The questions people actually ask
What happens if my membership lapses?
Tools already installed in your project keep working. They are files in your
.toe like any other component — nothing calls home to check on them, and
nothing expires.
What you lose is the ability to download them again: updates to Plus tools, and installing them on a new machine or into a new project. Rejoin and both come back.
Does any of this change the free toolkit?
No. The free packages are served publicly and unauthenticated exactly as they were, the source stays on GitHub under MIT, and the installer does not ask you to sign in to use them. If you never unlock anything, you will not notice the gate exists beyond a few cards marked Plus.
Nothing that is free today becomes paid later. Plus grows by new tools arriving in it.
Can I still read the source of a Plus tool?
Plus packages are not published to the public GitHub repository, and they are not MIT. Once installed they are ordinary TouchDesigner components in your project — you can open them, read the Python inside, and see exactly what they do. What you may not do is redistribute them.
I work on several machines — studio, laptop, a show box.
Connect each one. A membership is checked per machine against your account, so signing in on a new box is the whole procedure.
Licence keys are per tool, and how many machines one key covers is stated where you buy it.
Does the toolkit need internet to run?
Only to install and to update. Once packages are in your project, TouchDesigner runs them offline — which matters on a show machine, and is why the entitlement check sits on the download rather than on startup.
Why gate anything at all?
Because the free part is large, actively maintained, and takes real time. The honest version: a handful of the more involved tools pay for the rest of it staying free and moving. If the free toolkit is all you ever use, that is a completely fine outcome — it is MIT for a reason.
More from Function Store
The same shape elsewhere: a free core, more with support. One membership reaches these too — each product's own page states which tier it needs.
Start with the free toolkit
It is the honest way round: install it, use it for a week, and decide afterwards whether any of this is worth supporting.