Concept: My shoe project is Looney Tunes themed and based off of a pretty cool Looney Tunes theme song trap remix that I found on YouTube. I loved Looney Tunes growing up and wanted to incorporate that into my project. It is setup in three sections, the first is just simple clips from Looney Tunes episodes as the intro, then the second portion is the "dance party" where all of the Looney characters are dancing along with the song, and the third part (although no distinctly marked like the second part) is the trippy version of Looney Tunes where the characters are "high" on the music and things get a little too crazy.
Technique: I based this entire project off of the song that I found (Saint beatz - Looney Tunes Theme Song Trap Remix) that I thought was a super cool remix to a childhood favorite. I then found a bunch of Looney Tunes GIFS and abstract, trippy background GIFS that I put in there to kind of help break up the character clips. I also layered some of those backgrounds into the character GIFS to make my scenes and added some animated outlines on a couple of the clips for more visual appeal. I recorded the finished projection, removed the audio, then I recorded the theme song remix from YouTube, and editing that down in Premier Pro to match the projection.
Interpretation: I really like how this came out actually. I had to re-do it a couple of times because all the GIFS and video clips kept crashing MadMapper and I would lose my work ( I finally found a way around that though). There are a couple of areas around the edges of the toe and the heel that I had some issues mapping correctly but overall I think it turned out great and it makes me laugh as I find it highly entertaining to watch.
Concept:For me it is important that media has a message and I've always wanted to create a documentary style video that raises awareness and puts the spotlight on my industry (the live events industry) - we are the crew members who work backstage to make your concerts and shows come together. Covid has completely halted the multi-billion dollar live event industry. Most regular people don't realize just how many thousands of show production employees are completely out of work indefinitely because of this. We were the first to get shut down, and will be the last to re-open.
Technique: Since I couldn't go out and record the documentary myself (thanks to Covid), I decided to collect a bunch of videos from a YouTube mini series provided by Live Nation called "Backstage with Crew Nation" and I edited them in Premier Pro to make a shorter compilation of the whole series. This took quite a bit of time because the series is over an hour long in total but I edited down to 6 minutes while trying to maintain coherence and consistency through the cuts. I thought about including some of my own backstage footage but I think I'll put that in another project.
The surface I projected onto is hand painted white and built from canvas and a variety of wooden blocks. I tried to arrange the blocks in a way that would create some sort of 3D element but also not protrude too much which I gaffed and then gorilla glued together. I also spray painted the surface with silver glitter to give it an interesting reflective element (my favorite part).
Interpretation: This video represents not only my life currently with the pandemic, but the lives of many of my friends, relatives, and coworkers who are also effected by the loss of live events. For me, this is painful to watch yet gives me hope and reminds me of how great the entertainment industry really is and I get excited knowing how much FUN we are going to have when the industry returns. I'm very passionate about what I do and I think I have achieved my goal of raising awareness and showing the lives of those people who typically work in the shadows. I really enjoy seeing some big name artists giving credit to their production crew cause that honestly does NOT happen very often in show business.
The concept is a free form psychedelic show using the pyramids to match the techno vibe of Daft Punk's Derezzed from the movie TRON: Legacy. The original idea was to create a horizontal pyramid view to emulate a ancient city, but the projector struggled with lighting the pyramids evenly due to the shadows cast. Eventually I moved on to projecting onto them vertically to get even lighting.
Technique:
To begin, I started by printing out the templates for the pyramids. Three large ones and three smaller ones make up the main pattern. After cutting out and assembling all the pyramids, I taped them to a wall and set up my projector directly in front of the display with as little space between the two. The reason I did this was so that the colors wouldn't get washed away. I set up each pattern with quads and further set them up in the scenes/cues tool. Finally I synced them up to change every 5 seconds.
Interpretation:
The focus of the project is to be the pyramids themselves as they interact with their background. To accomplish this I recreated all the pyramids in madmapper using quads so that I could add patterns to them as well. I used multiple effects provided by madmapper but messed with each setting till I liked the final product. Overall this project was a blast as changing the settings allowed me to find new forms for the elements making the project look more unique.
Concept: To bring a virtual object out of a wall into real life using projection mapping. I used skating because it has been a hobby of mine and a way of transportation for me for a long time.
Technique: The part that took the longest to create was the actual animation which took a lot longer than I thought it would take, and as I've come to realize these things usually do. I created a Half Pipe ramp in blender and a cartoony looking skateboard. I first created a realistic looking one but was having problems with animation speeds for some reason so I stuck with the cartoony theme. I proceeded to animate the scene so the skateboard would loop from on side to the other and do a trick in the air once it reached the front. I wanted to have multiple iterations where it would do a different trick each time, but animating that one trick and to get it smoothly proved very time consuming in of itself. Once that was done, I rendered out a version making sure the camera was placed in such a way where the board in the air doing the trick would be the focal point and so it would like it was popping out at the viewer. In order to accentuate the illusion, I had to export the animation with an alpha channel background so whatever the animation was being projected onto, that would become the background. On top of that, I sent the video to after effects and added a fisheye lens to make it pop more, and then a time warp affect so the skateboard would appear in slow motion when it does the trick. Once that was all done, I put the video into in madmapper. I purposefully made the ramp in the animation green and somewhat translucent for two reasons. The first is that the viewer could see the board skating from one side to the other, and the second reason was for a virtual matrix type of aesthetic. When I was ready to projection map it on a wall I wanted the bottom of the ramp to be in contact with an actual floor so the the projection wouldn't just look like a floating screen of this cut-off ramp. I used a Panasonic DLP projector from the 3D Lab because I wanted to project it massively on a wall, unfortunately the first wall I found was in a too brightly lit area (it also was not as big as I had imagined it being). I was able to find a dark area in the ATEC building, and although their was not enough space to project a large image, I made a way and improvised and ended up with something I thought was cooler. The image was sheared but still connected to the floor, so the animation worked. From the beginning of the project I had this idea of a portal opening up, so I used the arc material in madmapper, created a mask around it, and placed it on top of the animation. I created a second cue where the portal opens up to reveal the full animation. By default the arc material has a sound edit so that was perfect to enhance the alive effect I was going for.
The first wall.
The animation.
Interpretation: I wanted the projection to just be on the wall and people could walk by. In the video I have it in a narrative way such that a skater it walking by and sees this portal in the wall. He can see enough to know that their is some skating business going on inside the portal and wants to join in. He talks to his friend (or himself in this case lol) and decides to jump in, first asking permission because he notices the arc "hearing" him talking. Eventually the arc opens up to allow him in (or the animation out).
Concept: The concept was to bring to life a larger sculpture that I created in Fabrication Lab 2 in semester of Fall 2020. The two concepts I wanted to bring together were heartbreak and breaking (known more widely as break-dancing).
Technique: I first used the MakerBot in the 3D studio to print out a 3D miniature of my sculpture. It printed correctly for the most part except for the top parts, which I had to break off and tape back on in the correct position (it is for that reason I had to use sticky tack to set it on its surface, otherwise it stands on it's own). I then placed the "Heart Breaker" on a cardboard cutout with tape on the sides holding it the ground (in this case was the grey blanket) that acted as a breakdancing surface to further build the piece. Once that was set, I opened Madmapper and brought in the obj. file of the the heart and calibrated it with the relief sculpture. Prior to that I had to adjust some of the UV mapped seams in blender because when I brought it into Madmapper it gave a weird form that would not allow to be correctly projection mapped on. Once it was calibrated, I brought in a video montage of people breakdancing from several videos that I found on youtube and applied it over the surface. I made sure to have one side of the heart with only colors projected on and the other side to have the dancers dancing on for ease of understanding and compositions sake. I changed the contrast a bit to get a better hue of the video on the sculpture. I also raised the thickness of the lines to bring out more of the sculpture. On the cardboard surface I added a strobe light emanating from the center to the edge of square to bring it all together. I added an audio control so that it would rotate mutually to the sound of the song. The song was "Money in the Bank" by Swizz Beats. It was really bouncy and is popular for breakdancing so I thought it would be good to use. Lastly, I added an animation of a heart beating in the corner for aesthetic purposes.
Interpretation: Solely from the idea of heartbreak and breaking, the first notion is that the energy created by sadness, anger, and exhaustion associated with heartbreak can be transmuted and put into one's vocation for therapeutic purposes and also to channel the energy in order to not be consumed by it. There are more interpretations of how I present the two ideas from a sculptural standpoint but I will leave those up for the audience to interpret. With the visuals projection mapped onto the sculpture, I wanted to show the high energy associated with breakdancing as well as bring out the form of the sculpture at the same time.
Above is a full longer clip, the one below is a short one with better lighting so it is easier to see the video being mapped.
Concept: I recently got these all white FILA shoes that were asking to be mapped on. I had recently been listening to a lot of old music so Linkin Park came to mind. I decided to use both and create a fictional collab between the shoe company FILA and the band Linkin Park for promotional purposes (not that LP needs any at all).
Technique: I placed the shoe on a chair that was covered with a grey blanket. I masked the entire shoe so the light would only it and not the background (I accidently moved my tripod half way through but managed after some time to get back in place with little remapping). I then masked out a couple zones where I could insert some media. I downloaded a portion of the the music video called "From the Inside" and allowed it to play in the center of the shoe. I applied the blue on the left and the slow strobe over the logo because I felt these added to the lighter melancholic beginning part of the song. In addition I like how the blue glowy particles felt calm and the transition that they would eventually make when the vibe of the song switched. At the bottom of the shoe I applied a texture and text on a mesh, so it would snake through. When the vibe of the song switched to loud metal I called upon the next cue which turned the blue particles have a red background and made the particles themselves orange so they looked like embers in a fire. On the right side of the shoe I kept the soundwave material so the audience could see the shift in size when the vibe changed. I put a particle accelerator FX on the FILA logo and switched up the color to add the craziness that could be matched to the music video and the music. I also made the text scroll through faster and changed the font to something more impactful.
Interpretation: I quite literally wanted the shoe to act as a TV. With the music video playing in the middle that acted as a screen, and with the visual of what the sound looked like on the right with the soundwave, and on the left with the particles, those acted like "visual speakers". Like my first project, I was going with the promotional aspect so that is why I left the title of the song on the bottom of the show for people to see. It was like a MTV when all they played were music videos, on a shoe.
Concept: I wanted to envision what it would be like to advertise for music artists around Dallas. Using projection mapping I want to project billboard size projections of them to promote their upcoming projects.
Technique: I created masks over two walls, and then one mask over the bridge area in the middle of the backdrop. Each mask required two layers, one for the photo, video, or text, and one for some texturing to make the scene more interesting and cohesive. The colors I chose for the textures were based off certain colors from the album covers that stood out to me. For example, for Donatella by Brione, she gave me a gold vibe so I went with that color for the textures. In addition, I chose fonts that matched the artists album's as well. I created three scenes and had a fade on each of them to switch seamlessly between artists.
Interpretation: All three artist displayed are from Dallas. All know about each other and the dynamic between these upcoming artists are that they all support each other and can be seeing rocking the stage one after the other at various shows that happened recently in Dallas. The projections are suppose to be being enough to depict each artist as larger than life. With a short clip of them doing their thing alongside their album cover, all in one geographical location, it allows the audience to familiarize with them in a very short amount of time.
George Floyd Protests: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2L-8-rUM7s&t=139s
Techniques:
I used rear projection film and selected videos from Youtube to cut together and use for my final composition. I also created my own assets and an interactive element. In Mad Mapper I used my edited videos and set them to keys to be able to go from one video to the next.
Interpretation:
I really wanted to make something that reflected on the past year and highlighted a lot of the issues that we have been fighting for. At the same time I wanted to mix it with what people thought 2020 would be like because this was the most unpredictable year ever.
Concept: I have been having some quarantine blues lately and this Mac Miller song has been pretty comforting to me lately. I tried to show how I have been feeling through this presentation. I like to think of the white ball as my life force going through the ups and downs of life.
Techniques: The techniques I used on this project was a mixture of Madmapper, Vezer and ISF Files. Madmapper was used to map and create my cues, Vezer was used to automate the cues and ISF parameters, and the ISF files gave me my visuals. The ISF files gave me some interesting parameters to automate and tweak.
Interpretation: This is a project that has kind of got me out of my depressing creative block. My goal was to see how much I could tweak these ISF files to make a minimalistic presentation. I haven't been feeling too hype as I normally do with my pop or trap music, so instead I chose a more mellow song that describes my mood lately. Due to the slow song, I made sure to at least have something new every 4 to 8 bars of the song.
The main object being projected onto is my two-foot-tall (real!) snake plant, behind which is a plain white board. Two Processing programs are Syphon'd into MadMapper, the Growth Decay one is controlled manually using the keys. The scenes are timed to change based on the instrumental version of the song Sleepyhead by Passion Pit.
Technique
Both of the Processing programs were created and used for previous projects (reuse recycle?) and minor changes were made to accommodate my laptop's processing power to avoid major lag. Growth Decay is projected onto the real snake plant, and I manually control where the initial activation areas begin using the keys. This is how I achieve the sweeping motions. I am also able to trigger the swirl mode with the keys.
Two fake snake plants emerge from behind the real plant. This is a picture that was taken of the real plant at the same angle as the projector and edited in Photoshop.
The fourth scene is the only one to feature audio controls, where the star sketch overlays the fake plants and flickers to the beat.
Interpretation
I liked the idea of projecting onto something organic and unruly in shape, so my snake plant was a good candidate for that. The idea for the fake plants emerging from the real one was an attempt to blur the lines between 2D and 3D. Choosing Sleepyhead for the song happened midway into the project. I wanted to find something calmer than my usual choices, but still energetic enough to be interesting.
Using the song “Every Tear Drop is a Waterfall” by Coldplay
I tried to create a space theme and simulation.
Technique:
After figuring out what song and idea to do, I tried to get
the backgrounds first. Once I did, I had to get the timing ready, so each one
followed the music, especially the countdown. I figured that I had to press
play on the countdown for it to start correctly. I tried to keep the same color
theme, which was more of the blues, pinks, and white. I did want to use neon
colors, but I based it off the colors from the tunnel. I used two black boxes
to project designs on it. I did use some clips and some designs provided by Madmapper.
Interpretation:
I wanted the main focus to be the boxes, so I had a black
background. Which then becomes a radar so it can seem like someone is in a ship
navigating. I tried to make the boxes look like they had small glowing buttons.
That is when the countdown starts, and the beat of the song is about to drop.
When it does the background becomes a galaxy and the boxes turn in to speakers.
From there the tunnel starts and it makes it feel like someone is in it. The boxes
just have a random design but still have the same colors as the tunnel.
There wasn’t a specific theme or idea for the design. I
mainly try to use different things, more of a random theme.
Technique:
The set up consisted of my black curtains and two floppy
hats of different colors. I was able to get a tripod for my phone which is what
I used to record.
I didn’t have a specific theme or ideas for the designs I
wanted to use so I just used random ones. So, I first started with a simple
easy look. Those were some that were provided by Madmapper and I used two
different masks. Then it was followed by an abstract look where only one mask
was used. The last two scenes were from a city street look. I had other cues
that I was going to use but for some reason they didn’t show up. So, I tried to
make each design on the hat a bit delayed just to add something since the other
cues didn’t show.
Interpretation:
There was no noise or song that the projects followed along.
It was more of a random type of design. It went from something simple with only
black and white to something more abstract with color. It then turns into the city
skyline and street. The shape of the hats made it seem like someone looking out
of binoculars.
I wanted to revisit my shoe project and add more sections and scenes to it. Last time, the cityscape took over most of the surface area of the shoe but this time I added a black box in the background to project it there instead. That way, I had more are of my canvas for more videos. The idea is to show different aspects of night life and activities that are associated with wearing shoes like the one being used for the project.
Techniques:
I added a galaxy along the soul and the front to encompass the rest of the shoe and give it a stronger foundation to help with cohesiveness. The color palette is derived from this galaxy which helps to bring everything together nicely. There are six different quadrants this time including the box that is separate from the shoe. The lines and one of the quadrants are tied to the music. The music itself has two different rhythms, it starts slow and picks up the pace half way.
Interpretation:
The music is definitely what drives the mood of the piece. The song starts slow on a lo-fi rhythm and we see someone skating and someone doing graffiti, however, when the rhythm gets more intense, the scene changes to street racing and police sirens to represent how more chaotic it can be if you increase the rhythm while being out at night in the city.
A cardboard cut-out 3D shape is mounted on the wall and is projected onto. The graphics are two original Processing programs that are imported into MadMapper using Syphon. The audio (Zzzzzz by Chrome Sparks) is superimposed in post-processing, and the video is taken in multiple cuts.
Technique
The Processing programs featured are my Shifting Stars sketch (new version), and my Growth Decay sketch that I created for this project. In this project, Growth Decay runs continuously, iterating over itself again and again to create a psychedelic, randomized vision. The first scene shown has Shifting Stars over Growth Decay using the Multiply effect, while the second is Growth Decay by itself.
The 3D shape was borrowed from the 3D studio, and the studio's projector set up was also used.
The video shown was edited in Adobe Premiere Pro to music.
Interpretation
This time, the project started with the sketch Growth Decay, and not the physical object. When designing the sketch, I wanted to make something that would appear to organically grow out from itself, and decay after a certain period of time. While the sketch definitely does do this, the psychedelic effect was actually accidental at first. I noticed that sometimes, the cells would circle around on themselves and continuously reactivate. Eventually, I was able to intentionally trigger this. The rainbow colors only solidified the trippiness.
For this project I had wanted to do something different from what I had previously done and step out of my comfort zone. Also, as graduation is drawing nearer for me, I wanted to do something that incorporated both my Computer Science Major as well as my Design Major. For this reason I decided to combine this project with a shape recognition program I have been working on. As such, I wanted this project to represent a merge between tech and old school. The biggest example of this merge I could think of was the contrast between Iron Man and Captain America.
Technique:
The way I ended up creating this piece was by first inputting the pictures I would want to map on to in to my program. The program I have been working on was written in python and works by analyzing hard edges and color differences around surfaces. It then averages out the general location based on how intense the edge/color difference is.
After I got the shapes back, I used them as masks in my mad mapper set up. These masks were the ones I projected on in the video seen below. From there, I simply added all the different scenes I wanted to play and made them flow together. Lastly, I exported this video and uploaded it to YouTube.
Interpretation:
The main reason I chose the subject that I did was because I wanted something that showed a mix between "new tech and old tech" (as Tony and Steve often call it). I thought they would perfectly represent my concept because, Iron Man is always trying to enhance and improve things to the next level. While Captain America is always falling back on the basics and the tried and true. However, despite their differences they are still able to work together harmoniously when it is needed the most.
Rock + roll by Eden has been a song that's been on repeat on my playlist these last couple of weeks, so I wanted to see if I could make something of it. Following the song itself, I wanted to create a moody vhs feeling for the videos, a little 90s, a little grunge. I didn't really get to try an edgier look for the shoe mapping project, so I figured I would try to do it here since it looked fairly interesting.
//Technique
I ended up creating a simple relief mapping for this project, to try my hand at it better than my last one. It was really hard for me to synch up the music video angle with my placement of my boxes. I'm only working with my pico projector and with the space I had, I felt like it always looked kind of off no matter what angle I held it at. To add to the grittyness of the aesthetic, I did multiply layers for each area of my reliefs with random texture layers underneath it. I had three separate cues for this performance. The first was bit of the original MV for the song to lay out the context. The second cue starts when the two characters begin their journey, and the final cue is when the lead singer talks about how he wants to be like the ones who came before him. I think, of the three, the third was the probably the most interesting.
//Interpretation
I had three separate cues for this performance. The first was bit of the original MV for the song to lay out the context. The second cue starts when the two characters begin their journey, and the final cue is when the lead singer talks about how he wants to be like the ones who came before him. I think, of the three, the third was the probably the most interesting.
Overall, I had a lot of fun doing this project. I honestly struggle coming up with ideas for visuals when it comes to this, but it helped me to have an aesthetic to try to shoot for when I was putting this together.
Concept: Akira is one of my favorite films of all time. I could talk about anything relating to this movie; the animation, the cultural impact, even details about how the movie's production. Of course, as an animation appreciator, I had to make this project an ode to my all time favorite. The original idea was to do a variation of the tape project but with slightly different material. I work at a print shop and cut some sticker vinyl into the shape of the hiragana letters for 'Akira'. From there I wanted to project onto the letters but sadly when I started to project the vinyl didn't catch the light well so I shifted plans.
Technique: This composition was fairly simple to do, just fairly time consuming. The first step was deciding what song I was going to use. There's an excellent video on YouTube of some 3D recreated visuals from Akira put to a remix of the main theme, so I decided to use that as it sounded a little haunting and 'epic'.
Then I watched Akira more than a couple times to think on what footage I wanted to use. Ultimately, I decided to use the scenes of destruction from the end because it would pair with the musical theme well. I then spent time editing the film footage to sync with the music in Premiere Pro. Then in MM I traced the vinyl cutouts and gave them a strobe effect that somewhat synced to the music as well. Because the light didn't catch well on the vinyl, I offset the position of the projected shapes to give it a little more depth.
Interpretation: The final product didn't quite meet my initial vision but after some of the technical and material difficulties I was very satisfied with the way this turned out. The way the video syncs with the music still gives me chills sometimes, but that could just be because I love this film THAT much.
*Side note: Big apologies for missing the critique, I had stuff done but couldn't upload because of an 80 render I was doing on the remote access labs and couldn't use my home computer/internet. Everyone's projects looks great though!
When the pandemic hit, I was in Germany studying abroad. I was living in Marburg studying German Language. The pandemic sent me home after 7 incredible weeks in which I met many lifelong friends and improved my German greatly. After moving back to Texas for 4 months I realized my hometown in Michigan might be a better place to ride through the storm.
Michigan ended up teaching me more than I ever expected. I lived through a devastating winter storm, power outages, learned open-water distance swimming, and volunteered as a builder for an organic farm.
Overall the time has taught me a lot about nature and how the world works at the smallest levels. To commemorate this past year and a half in Michigan I created this piece. It consist of footage from the parks around my house paired with myself singing and playing "Michigan" by the Milk Carton Kids on guitar.
Techniques:
I have been practicing this song for many years. Little did I know it would come in handy for this final project of projection mapping. Having a compelling sound track makes the process of finding and paring visuals much easier.
For my stage to showcase my footage I created a trifold structure and mapped 6 rectilinear faces onto the form. Behind the form clouds are floating by to sustain the nature theme.
I automated the scenes to play through at specific intervals. This was in attempt to get certain visuals to match up with particular moments in the song.
Interpretations:
The final composition came out very close to how I envisioned it. If I were to perfect this piece I would make the trifold stage appear as if on an isometric grid to the camera. This would cause an interplay between the 2-dimensional videos projected on the left-hand shape and the shape itself. The concept of a 'window' looking into past videos played in well with the lyrics, particularly the phrase "Michigan's in the Rearview".
15 Step by Radiohead sits atop my list of favorite songs. I first started listening to this song at a very young age as my Dad, who plays the drums, would play it frequently. I wanted to emphasize the beat by having the textures start scrolling in various directions in rhythm with the beat.
In cue one I incorporated cloudy textures whose scale, speed and direction modulate with audio and key presses.
In cue two I wove the dunes texture over 4 surfaces to create movement and interest.
Techniques:
For the background I created a cardboard relief sculpture out of a large box. The sculpture features 8 prominent rectilinear faces formed into cubes popping out of the wall. First I first drew out the structure I wanted on the back, then I cut the outline and stitched it together with matte brown tape.
In order to get the surfaces to coordinate with the beat I programmed the O, P, M, N and B keys to the following:
O: Reset song. This is useful when prototyping. P: Play song. Again useful for prototyping.
M: Change direction and speed of movement of 3 surfaces in Cue 1. N: Change direction and speed of movement of 3 surfaces in Cue 1. B: Change direction and speed of movement of 4 surfaces in Cue 2.
During the composition, I am manually playing with the M, and N keys to coordinate with the beat.
I also connected the playback speed of the surfing video in Cue 2 to the audio to make it appear as if the beat were causing the surfer to pause mid-motion.
Interpretations:
I like the interplay between the various faces on the piece. As the beat goes on, it influences the direction of the textures. This creates movement and interest and connects the audio elements with the video.
Overall I think the relief sculpture I designed combined dimension, movement, and perspective well.
Final Composition:
There are two cues utilized. The break comes about halfway in. Watch through the end as I explore the piece from different angles with the camera:
My initial idea was to make a silhouette effect on my dancing body using two projectors. I ordered one through amazon and they lost it so I was forced to buy a different projector who outshined my tiny pico projector. The difference in "faux lazers' was disgusting and ruined my complete idea. If only amazon didn't lose my very important pico projector. What better way to avenge my love for silhouettes than using my own on a huge blank canvas with so much real estate for fun and lazers. I'm happy I have a better projector. I really want to invest in an EMMA laser projector. That is the future.
Concept: I wanted to revisit my second project because it was the one I was happiest with, while also being one that I had room to expand on.
Techniques: I had two ideas for expanding on the concept, the first was to use the space around the boot. The second was to turn the boot into a 3d model so that I could take advantage of madmapper's lighting. Unfortunately the second part fell through and, as I had spent more time than I should have, means that I haven't completed the revised projection.
Interpretation: Expanding and using the space around the boot is fairly simple. I've reused the boxes from project 3 and rearranged them around and behind the boot. One of the main ideas that I had (but didn't get to do on the original) was project water onto the platform beneath the boot. As part of this, I'm going to include lines around the objects to simulate ripples during key parts of the song.
Turning the boot into a 3d model is something that took a lot of time and ultimately failed. I attempted to use photogrammetry to create a 3d model from the boot, however, consistent with my previous attempts at photogrammetry, my effort failed (the point cloud was much more coherent than previous attempts, but it still wasn't good enough to make a model from). I've been using Regard3d for this as I have an AMD gpu and most photogrammetry software requires an nvidia card, so that could be part of the problem.
Lighting is a big part of what I would like to play with in regards to the revised projection, so I will be turning most, if not all of the scene into 3d models.
The boxes will get their own surfaces too (you can see the one on the left is currently wip), however getting a rough setup for the ripples is about as far as I've gotten.
Revised Projection: It's finally here!
Controlling the project (My original info can be found here): Everything, from the cues, the material parameters, UV rotation, etc, was controlled with a MIDI file. Now, for the most part changes in materials and surface visibility were
controlled with cues, which themselves were controlled via the file,
however a lot of things that reacted to the beat, like the ripples in
the water, were controlled via MIDI as well. This was born out of my own perfectionism and the fact that I often have issues with audio-detection algorithms functioning spottily at best, not at all at worst. So why would you use a MIDI file? Because it gives you a finer level of control at the cost of time.
As a warning, this can get very time consuming; about half of the time spent on my project was creating the MIDI file and setting the controls. Make sure you keep notes on what's controlling what, as having lots of MIDI controls can get messy as well.
This should be fairly program agnostic as all we're doing is making a MIDI file pretend to be a MIDI controller. The basic steps required to do this are:
1) Find a program that can output MIDI through MIDI. I think most Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs) can do this (I used REAPER), and there may be some standalone MIDI editors that can do this as well.
2) Download and install a virtual MIDI cable. Personally I used LoopBe1 since I'm on Windows
3a) Create your MIDI file. If you're using a DAW then you can place your audio in a separate track from the MIDI track, and use that to help sync the MIDI with the audio. Additionally, make sure your BPM and time signature match the audio as closely as possible. This will allow you to snap the MIDI notes to the beat and copy-paste repetitive sections without having to re-sync the notes to the audio.
3b) Create your projection. Keep in mind your audio and how you have your MIDI notes laid out when you're planning and creating your surfaces, cues and materials. In some cases (like having things react to a beat) it may be easier to control a surface or material directly with a MIDI file instead of using a cue. You may even want to allow some things to be controlled by the original audio, in which case you'd probably be best off outputting audio from your DAW into MadMapper (or other program of choice) through a virtual audio cable in the same way we're using the virtual MIDI cable. That way you can ensure synchronization between the audio and MIDI controlled parameters and cues.
4) Once you have your MIDI file set up, set the MIDI HARDWARE output to the virtual MIDI cable. Not the audio output, the MIDI HARDWARE OUTPUT. We want the MIDI file outputting the raw note information as if it was a MIDI controller, not the audio. In REAPER this can be achieved by going to your mix (at the bottom of the screen), clicking on the "route" button that corresponds to your MIDI track, and then under "Hardware Input" select your virtual MIDI cable (in my case, "Loop Be Internal Midi").
5) In your projection mapping software (in this case, MadMapper), go into your settings and ensure that the virtual MIDI cable (in my case "Loop Be Internal Midi") is present and enabled.
6) Treat the MIDI file like a normal hardware MIDI controller and assign your cues, scenes, material and surface parameters like you normally would for a MIDI controller.
7) Make sure you're outputting your projection to your projector, swap to your DAW, and press play!
Tip: Have some scenes or a row of cues be "reset points" for various stages of your projection. This will make it easier to preview changes you've made without having to start your projection at the beginning.
Since this is an issue I ran into: Help, I have my virtual MIDI cable set as the hardware MIDI output in my DAW and as an input in my projection mapping software, and I have things set to trigger with notes but nothing's happening! What could be causing this?
Check and make sure the MIDI channel you're sending from your DAWis the same as the channel you're receiving in your projection mapping software. This can allow you to have multiple MIDI files loaded accessing the same note without conflicting with each other by putting them on different channels, however it can also be a bit confusing if you're not familiar with it. However if that doesn't help, all I can suggest is making sure you have your MIDI outputs and inputs enabled and properly configured (and your virtual MIDI cable isn't muted), and that your MIDI controls are set to the notes you've defined.
My final project is a live collaborative drawing system that allows anyone with a web browser to draw on textures and essentially edit the UV of an object that is being projected onto. This is a prototype to allow experimentation with interactive projection mapping.
How it Works:
This is what the user sees when they first visit the website. Here they can draw, change the color of their brush and change their brush shape. The face number corresponds to a specific face of the physical object (In this case an icosahedron).
As the user draws on the canvas, the canvas for other users updates as well. The client informs the server when something new is drawn and another client running on the madmapper system updates the object's UV and sends it to madmapper via syhpon.
We do this for each visible face of the object and add it to the madmapper composition by UVing the input to the arranged surface.
Using the song "Cut My Hair" by Mounika and Cavetown, I wanted to portray a kind of sad and rainy theme that matched how the song felt.
Techniques:
I used the same box that I projected on for my last project, but this time I decided to put it on the floor and have the corner facing the camera, so that the box could be at an angle. I also project on this nice flower hanging thing because I thought it would be cool to project on.
Since the flower has separate sections of it (different outlines) I thought that it would be cool to project something different onto each area. Originally I mapped the full outline of the hanging flower, and then made masks in the same layer for each inner flower outline. However, I then made different layers for each outline and just copied and pasted the according mask in the layer. This probably wasn't a good/right way to do it, but I confused myself so I left it how it was. For the box, I used a grid on the mesh warping option to have it conform to the box and not distort the projection on the box or have it look flat. I decided not to map onto the top of the box because it wouldn't even be able to be seen anyways. I was originally going to film and project at a different angle so that the top of the box would be seen, but it didn't work out so I just resorted to a straight on angle. I only used lines a couple of times for the circle in the middle of the flower. I used a lot of effects that looked like rain or clouds to accompany the rainy backgrounds. On one of the last cues where it portrays someone sitting in a train, I used an effect that looks like light moving to make it look like the moon passing was giving off light.
Interpretation:
I tried to project what this song makes me feel. It gives me sad vibes and the feeling of being empty, so I wanted to portray that with rain. There’s also a kind of fuzzy sound in the background of the song that kind of sounds like rain, so that helped match the vibes that I set for the project. For the first cue that had the daisies, I wanted to portray a kind of sweet, mellow vibe that the introduction of the song gives me so I included a calm, soothing background accompanied with calm patterns. For the following cues where it's alternating between the daisies and a static background, I wanted to do a kind of static/intermission look to look like it's cutting in and out, and I did it along with the music where there's a certain key that is played. When the background music cuts out so that we are only left listening to they key being played, I switch in between the static background and a plain white background. I showed the plain white background when there is no noise the signify emptiness. When the music starts again I switch to a rainy background, which shows that we kind of switched moods/vibes. The rest of the video is just different cues with the same vibes.
For this project, I used the song "You" by Petit Biscuit to create what I consider a sort of extension of the Cara Mia project done by Lightsquad, however, this story is rounded out with the joys that come from getting vaccinated and being able to finally start to get back to a semi-normal life.
Process
Because of space/logistical constraints (ie I'm moving apartments in 5 days) I decided I was going to create this piece strictly in Madmapper, similar to the first project. I first found a photo of the Empire State Building as I knew that was the building I wanted to build a projection for. I pulled the photo and measured the dimensions in Photoshop so I could build the content to the correct dimensions. After that, I created a custom preset in Premiere Pro with the correct pixels and began to gather footage. I focused mostly on content for this project as there was a lot to sort through, both for music and for video content to sort through to hit the right tone and progression of clips and audio. I was able to gather footage early on from the pandemic from YouTube and vaccine, ambulance, and outdoor clips from the free video site, Pexels. Once the footage was edited together I imported the photo of the Empire State Building and the video into Madmapper and put together a planar map with an "add" overlay to let some of the building show through.
Interpretation
I enjoyed making this piece because I saw it as an extension of the Cara Mia project and rounding out the circle of what has been an incredibly hard 14 months. While the pandemic isn't over yet, I think many people will find solace and hope in this piece and what is to come over the next few months as we gain back more of normal life.
Concept: For this final project, I chose summer as the theme. This project is similar to the relief project as well as the shoe project that we did this semester. It includes a variety of summer activities or summer themed events. The song that I chose for this is called “Palm Trees” by Surfaces, which also goes along well with the overall concept of this project.
Techniques: Similar to project 3, I used the spatial scanning technique to capture my background and boxes that I used as my relief. After Effects was the software that I mainly used to create compositions and different animations for this project.
To capture the theme of summer, I used a couple of videos from my past summer vacation of a beach and a harbor. I also used a bright and warm color palette, as well as cool colors to contrast with it, when needed.
Since this was the final project, I wanted to include things that I’ve never tried to in past projects like videos and audio visuals, so I had a lot of fun working with those. I also wanted to use text for this, just to see how it would work. Text is also something that I never added in past projects, so I wanted to experiment with that as well. I also incorporated everything that I’ve learned in this class into the final project.
Interpretation: The outcome of my final project.
The summer themed relief mapping.
The idea of creating the two boxes as “people” was pretty fun for me and it helped me convey certain ideas of scenery, especially the harbor and the scuba-diving one. I like the idea of being able to project something that can make simple boxes look entirely different, which is something I lacked in the last relief project.
A good friend of mine and frequent artistic collaborator, Trevor Dean Stewart, is a composing student at Columbia College Chicago. He shared a recent composition named Beam for the New Music Ensemble there, and asked me to develop some visuals for it.
Beam is an extremely complex composition which contains a great deal of synthesized or electro-acoustic music written and performed by Trevor himself, as well as the analog work of 19 other musicians in the Ensemble — it ended up being over 50 tracks when arranged in Logic Pro and Ableton Live.
He and I sat down and listened through an initial mix of the composition and divided it into 6 movements which had a distinct sonic and emotional character, and some of which were mostly digital or alternatively mostly analog. We talked through some of the ideas he had for visualization and some of the things which came to mind when he listened to/arranged/wrote the music.
After I walked him through the many options for generative/modular/parametric media native to MadMapper, I moved onto designing and programming the visualization.
Process:
Splitting the different compositional movements into individual pieces (defined by particular musical phrases or the predomination of a particular instrument, for example), I began to design visual compositions and record to Scenes in MadMapper.
Over the course of the composition, I created nearly 300 quads/triangles/circles/surfaces in MadMapper. I used different media and applied different effects/blend modes to those surfaces or groups of surfaces to achieve the goal of creating different elements for each movement which seemed to "map" or follow the musical phrases or particular musical instruments.
After recording 25 scenes — some of which were 30 seconds, some of which were 2.5 seconds or instant transitions — I began the process of programming the show control in QLab.
The first step I took was to "slice" the audio file in QLab which made it extremely easy to get timecodes in a format compatible with QLab's auto-follow cueing functions. I divided the track up into sections where each one was equal to the length of one of the movements of the composition.
From that point, I tracked each MadMapper scene and scene transition based on the timestamp of the song when played as an audio cue within QLab. Each OSC cue fires a particular scene within MadMapper in time with the song and allows for fades to take place internally in MadMapper. However, I could have included the fades within QLab and not in MadMapper — either choice would have been fine.
This image displays all of the cues and control times on the right hand side.
This image displays some of the OSC controls as well as the way the show control operates when the song has been played/the MadMapper composition has began.
Interpretation:
I feel like I was able to augment the sonic achievement Trevor made with such a complex composition by creating what I think is a pretty complex MadMapper visualization. I learned a lot about using Mapper as an animation tool and have become pretty familiar with the ins and outs of cueing when making changes to the built in media as well as to the geometry of surfaces.
As far as the show control, I am not sure if the array of auto-follows in QLab was the most intelligent way to time each cue's action. It definitely worked. However, it was challenging to make changes to the timing of an individual cue because it caused a potential need for change in the timing of cues that fell after the initial changed cue.
Nonetheless, I'm happy with the composition and am glad to support a talented artist with techniques developed over the course of this semester.
I was given the opportunity to serve as Co-Production Design (focusing on projection and show control) for the recent Theatre UTD production of Oedipus the King at the school of Arts and Humanities. Collaborating with Director Michael Cleveland (who took point on sound and scenic design), we decided to use projectors to transform the metallic and stark scenic design. The set of the play is largely defined by the presence of the large palace doors and dais center stage and the scaffolding which surround that centerpiece. It was my responsibility to augment the emotional effect of the actor's performances and other technical elements (namely sound and lighting by Christopher Treviño).
The production of the play had a contrast between the formal elements — translated Classical Greek dialogue and the turn-of-the-20th-century costuming (by Michael Robinson) — and the experimental elements by way of sound, light, and projection. This contrast was intended to develop a sense of foreboding in the audience, who know the terrible fate which awaits the tyrant Oedipus but can do nothing, of course, to stop it.
Process:
I used MadMapper to complete the projection mapping and used QLab for sound mixing and overall show control/programming.
First, we determined that a rear projector would address the palace doors, which had the benefit of creating interesting silhouettes when characters entered the scene. For every other part of the set, a front projector (with an extreme wide throw) hung above the sound booth was used.
Then, I mapped out surfaces for all of the different elements of the set, first creating master masks omitting all parts of the stage that would never be contacted by projection. I duplicated those masks and then further masked out individual elements of the set —
palace doors
stage floor
dais/platform
palace doorframe
stage left scaffolding
stage right scaffolding
the canvases hung off of the scaffolds
— these elements all had individual surfaces created for the maximum control possible.
Above photo depicts the pre-visualization within MadMapper for a particular cue.
After completing this mapping/masking, I developed looks for different scenes/moments in the play and recorded individual Scenes within MadMapper. In several cases, I duplicated surfaces in order to get smooth transitions from scene to scene — ending up with several copies of the palace door quads for example.
I made extensive use of the internal visualization tools in MadMapper - using specific parametric/modular generators as motifs in the design - as well as found media for certain elements.
After completing the design, I implemented each of the programmed Scenes in the show control via QLab and OSC addressing. I made extensive use of auto-following in QLab in order to associate sound and projection cues with each other since many of those cues were relevant to the same, specific moments in the production.
Interpretation:
This experience gave me some wonderful experience in applying the lessons learned this semester to linear performance art. I do wish the footage gathered of the production (snippets of which I compiled in the embedded video) represented the projection better — it was much more evident in the theatre than it was in certain shots. That being said, I am still extremely happy with the work and the level of cohesion achieved with projection and the other elements of the production design, especially the lighting design.
Great thanks to all involved with the production, including but not limited to those named in the program available here: https://buff.ly/3soW0dD
