Building Projection 101

Warper & Mapping related questions

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Building Projection 101

Postby pmorgan » Wed Mar 30, 2011 11:05 am

hi all,

as we all have been seeing, there is lots of building projection and mapping being done recently and lots of it seems to be happening with pandoras box. i'm very curious how this is to be done as i would love to try it sometime (have all the gear just not the knowhow).

i guess most of the content is rendered out of compositing apps and in most cases, pandoras is just doing the blends, keystone and playout (but again im not really too sure)

does anyone here have any experience with this and what are the tools that you go about using to make it happen.

basically, im most intersted in how do you go about getting the building into a compositing app and making a template so that everything lines up so when you get the projector and server, it all just works. how do you go about getting depth and all that stuff right?

anyway i know its a bit of a odd one but if anyone has any experience that would be great. if anyone has a good list of things to do that would be most helpful. thanks!
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Re: Building Projection 101

Postby malkuth23 » Thu Mar 31, 2011 6:43 pm

That is a big question :) But not a secret or anything.

Pandora can be used several different ways and it always depends on the building.

Are you in the U.S.? Come take our class in Agoura, CA. It is free! There are classes in Germany and other countries as well.

For a basic answer, if the building is simple - A flat skyscraper for example, then the size of it becomes almost irrelevant. Search around for the Bogota Bi-Centennial. It was a flat wide building. More a challenge for the projectionist then the Pandora's operator. We can do keystoning and blending inside the program and finish up a project like that in a few hours. The content is made with a custom resolution pre-determined by measuring the height and width of the building.

A much smaller building with more detail is much harder though. Going around a corner can be handled with Pandora's Warper, which lets you 'warp' and bend an object that the video can then be applied to. If things get really complicated with pillars or strange architectural details sometimes it is necessary to switch to Gmax or 3DStudioMax and build the objects there - then import them into Pandoras Box.

Really it is not a question that can be easily answered in a single post. You should give us a call if you got a specific project in mind.
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Re: Building Projection 101

Postby Linton9 » Sun Apr 03, 2011 2:17 am

To create the content, get yourself to where you plan to put your projector(s) and take a photo from where the front of the projector lens would be. Import that photo into your favourite compositing software, and using the photo as your template, start animating
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Re: Building Projection 101

Postby malkuth23 » Sun Apr 03, 2011 3:48 am

Well if you are going to do it that way you could just play the content out of a dvd player... Of course if you were a couple degrees off you have to re-render everything. It is also much harder to create content.

This is the main point of using Pandoras Box in situations like this. You can design the content from the easiest perspective and let PB do the grunt labor.

Take the picture from the front. Create all the content applied to that picture as a map. Then use that picture with PB Warper and bend it to the actual building. When the door matches the real door and the windows match the real windows you know you are lined up. Then apply the rendered content you created and everything will snap into place.
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Re: Building Projection 101

Postby pmorgan » Wed Apr 06, 2011 5:59 am

Ok so that part makes sense but let's say you can't actually get to the location (or just want to try this 3d way), if you have a accurate model of the building, and you position your 3d camera in the same position the projector is going to be in and then export that image and draw/composit ontop of it its going to be the same thing right?

im assuming this is how some companies are doing it these days.
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Re: Building Projection 101

Postby Linton9 » Wed Apr 06, 2011 11:04 am

Exactly! Of course neither option will be perfect, which is why we use media servers with powerful warping functionality, and not DVD players.
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