First Projection Experiment
11.2.16
Today (11th Feb 2016) myself and Tom met up to conduct our early experiments using the projector and our sculpture (which Tom created). Above you can see the layout that was created the night before, however, the projector and
Last night Tom experimented a little bit with masking in after effects but struggled because neither of us really knew what technique to use to achieve the desired result. We are currently organising a meeting with Phil Osbourne to potentially further this experiment (Tom will upload photos from this attempt on his blog).
Unfortunately we had trouble with physically making the video play within the masks. We attempted to use the 'Corner Pin' tool to counteract this, however we struggled to get it to play, only getting the individual static, solid colours to be projected.
Here is a little snippet from his attempt last night demonstrating this:
As you can see the squares are masked out but there is no dynamic movement as the animation that I created is not there. However as a preliminary test and it showed us that there is much more to be explored.
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| The incomplete mask |
I must admit, we only had a limited time with the projector and after a short break and a drink we decided to research other programs that would allow us to map in a more intuitive way.
We started research to find tutorials on how to use projection maps, and we came across this tutorial that used a program called VPT 7.
Upon startup this program seemed rather intuitive, you put video into different layers and then mixed it and looped it using the different tabs. However, the interface felt clunky and we spent at least thirty minutes trying to figure out how to get our own footage into it. We ended up having to go into the a program files and manually drag and drop the specific footage into the default project folder and then delete the pre-loaded footage that for some reason would take priority over any other footage that you would try to import.
So after this we looked into other softwares and came across a beta visualisation program called HeavyM, a simple tool that allows you to mask and create easy projection maps with a whole range of visual effects available to use:
We are going to be using this and hopefully contact the publisher of the program and potentially get a full copy of the program or even get a chance to collaborate with them.
Anyway, this has been very useful and I can't wait to pursue this further
FROM TOM's BLOG
FROM TOM's BLOG
It all started with Wednesday night, after my day of learning the whole of Lightroom in one sitting and sorting the aminmals out and gymming, the last thing that wanted to do was get knee deep in after effects but i did.
I found it hard to get in to it, but I soon found a way I could map out the boxes. First off I used the shape tool to place where the boxes are on the top and sides. However I soon discovered that I couldn't put a video in to the squares, after having a brake from after effect it clicked. I had to look in the effect panel to find the pin effect which alows you to munipulate the video image to put it in to the right perception for the projection.
Another thing i struggled with is that you could set the secondary as the projected which is great but you it is really hard to draw shapes on the monitor when you can't see what's going on the projector... It's a guessing game.
Any way here was an ok test for the first time.
The morning
"Nice early start! 8.45am picking Jonny up and heading on over to mine to get on the projection together. We soon discover that we didn't know what is going on. We did a couple of test in after effect, showing Jonny how I did it last night.
We started to test out other software, of which some melted me and jonnys brains in a bad way. It's called VPT and it is bad. Maybe we got the wrong end of the stick but having to put videos you want to included in your projection in the defult folder in side the program folder in the C drive..... What's that all about.
We finally found some easy to use software called HeavyM I really do recommend downloading it, it solves the problem I had in after effect stright away. After effect may still be able to do the effects however this reassembly new software funded by crowdsource online is the best we have found. It's like a iPhone or a Mac. Nice clean and user friendly. But this time it could run on a PC."
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