Conner Hill Project 3: Relief Mapping

 

Concept:

I started this project with the corner of my bedroom ceiling in mind. There is a rectangular drop down on part of the edge of my ceiling that I thought would be the perfect place to map. I wanted to add more appeal though, so I thought that I could get some more depth and geometry if I cut out shapes and taped them to the ceiling. Now I can have more things to map and create more of a landscape. I wanted all of my visuals to be audio reactive to the song Gnomad by Schmoop and jade Cicada. This song is a high-energy halftime drum and bass song so I wanted to have lots of white on the buildups to signal that there is something coming up and then go all red and white on the drops so that I can match the energy of the song.

Technique:

I started out by cutting out my 3D shapes from poster board. I wanted variety so I did two different triangular prisms and a cube. I then noticed that there is no round geometry in the scene, so I hung up my poi. The balls at the end of the rope made for a perfect way to hang the balls right at the base of the triangles so that it looks like they are hanging from the triangles. Once everything was set up I put my projector onto the tripod and began the process of creating layers that I could map onto the shapes. I started with the walls and then worked my way up to the smaller shapes that I had cut out. I then turned most of my quads into line layers as well to give them some more depth and accentuation to their edges. Once things were mapped, I started adding in video clips that matched the energy and madness of the song, and then I set up their speed parameters to bump to the bass hits in the song. This gave the visuals lots of "pop" and made things feel more custom.

Interpretation:

I LOVED this project. I want to build custom 3D stages for concerts, so this was a great way to get a feel for how I can build things to map on and how I can work my content for music. I also learned about how important projector positioning is when you are trying to the spatial map so that your videos aren't too stretched.