Posts

Projection mapping onto white cubes

Image
For this projection mapping I was using an Optoma LED short throw projector Canon EOS 1300D camera Adobe Premiere pro CC 2015 Madmapper   The cubes are from plywood and been design in Solidworks (if you'd like to do the same cubes, you can PM me and I can send you the DXF files) and after they've been glued, sanded and painted to get an even white color so they're reflecting nicely the projection. For the spatial scanning I was using the DSLR camera and by doing that I got an image where I can do the design part, mapping up the quads, lines etc. In the video for the background I edited the footage and after I masked out the cubes so it's interfering with the projection on the cubes.

QC - Quartz Composer

I'm using Quartz Composer as a medium between Ableton live and Madmapper. " Quartz Composer is a node-based visual programming language provided as part of the Xcode development environment in macOS for processing and rendering graphical data." - this is what Google says about it. QC is a really straightforward platform because of the graphical interface. It's using patches (functions) to create graphical transitions/animations, music visualizer etc.  I'm using QC to get MIDI from Ableton and with that it will trigger the action of a color flashing up.  Getting only 2 patches - MIDI note receiver and sprite. There is a little adjustment needed on the MIDI note receiver because when I first tried and set everything correctly - for example the trigger is the note C3 in Ableton and in QC as well but it was not working. After I found on the Madmapper tutorial that Ableton using middle as C3 but QC using C5. So by setting in QC the middle C to 3 solved the p...

Ableton Live

Ableton live is a useful tool paired with Madmapper for live action projection mapping. First I've tried to use a launchpad to playback MIDI so it will trigger presets. But because of the latency issues I just didn't like the sometimes half a second delay (maybe in the future when I can fix the latency problem I'll get back to the launchpad because it gives more control overall). So I decided to use IAC Driver so I can use MIDI internally. I'm using Ableton live mainly to sequence my mapping. This is because I don't possess any music editing skills yet. But I have the notion what Ableton able to achieve with a person who has those skills. The making of the MIDI sequencing-  I've created two MIDI tracks and set them up as follows: The first MIDI track input | MIDI from - no input. and it's track output           | MIDI to - IAC Driver Channel 1. The second MIDI track input | MIDI from - the first MIDI track (1 MIDI)  ...

AQM / timing

When I started the project I figured my first goal should be the timing of the different events, when and what will happen during the projection. This timing can be achieved several different ways for sure, but there's two main timing I discovered so far and they are useful. The first is a video based timing, so first I need to create the video and put the desired things I want to project onto the target surface. It's a kind of mashup video that contains several actions. Let's say you want to project onto a cube and have all the 3 visible sides to show different videos. In this case I'd create a video with the three different actions that's going to make up the three sides of the cube, so this way the timing, the sounds and everything is going to be more precise because there's little or no preset is being used (preset as it's name suggest a set of actions tha's been preprogrammed and can be triggered with different actions like keyboard, MIDI, beat et...

AQM (ableton-quartz composer-madmapper)

To be able to sequence the actions I'm projecting, I found QC really helpful. The way I'm using it is having a MIDI receiver patch receiving MIDI data from Ableton and the notes are being connected to sprite color. Every single time when the note, connected to the color is being played, it's value turns to 1 and it gives a white flash till the note is playing. I'm using this white flash to generate different colors in madmapper by changing the RGB values.

Madmapper Project

Madmapper is a projection mapping software and my project is about projecting onto 3D surfaces and trying to figure out what are the capabilities and limitations of the software. I started to use the software last Wednesday (21st of June) since then I could manage to use the software on a basic level. On a basic level I mean being familiar with the interface and tested a few simple ideas. For example I set an image of a room into the preview output window and made simple mapping such as rectangles with different colors and with videos. As I was watching the tutorials I had to realize there is a lot of "pre-production" involved when a full scale project is being made using a mapping software like Madmapper. So in order to be able to use the software in it's full "potential" I need to use other software. These software are Adobe Premier pro, After Effects, Quartz Composer, Ableton Live. My initial plan is to have samples of clips - audio and video, and synchro...