[MUSIC].
I have a really good sense for how this complex system is integrated,
how the MIDI is connecting with Resolume,
and how audio is moving through this,
but I still don't understand how you got all your cool projections,
all your cool shapes to perfectly align with this sculpture you made,
and then, I don't know I'm still dying to know more
about how the content goes right around those lines,
and how pieces look like they're inside those little polygons.
It's just as fascinating.
So could you talk a little bit about how you configured all this when you set it up.
Sure thing. So step one is easy.
Step one is just make as much content as you can that
is made for the perfect ideal version of the shape.
So, if I am looking at this thing,
this structure in a 3D model,
under perfect conditions from a front view, right?
It's just going to look perfect.
Okay.
So the first thing I do when I'm making a mapping template as it's called,
is from a 3D model,
is I take it, I get it into a front view,
I put it as centered as I can,
and then I create a high contrast image,
a PNG image that is sort of the reference image for animating.
Okay.
Which in this case would be this one. Right.
Got it.
It's already been mapped to this structure,
but if you were to undo all of the mapping and play this on a screen,
it would look perfect.
The first image.
Yep.
Right? So then, when you're creating content,
it all needs to be reflective of this template.
It cannot be bigger than it, it cannot be smaller,
it cannot be warped or twisted,
the edges need to be exact.
All of your animations need to be based on these lines and this design.
That's because when you're mapping,
what you're doing is you're accounting for imperfections in
physical space and then kind of moving pixels around,
but if you have two images that were made based on different templates,
and you're mapping to one template,
the other one's gonna look wonky.
Okay. So you will open up After Effects or some kind of video editing software.
Yep.
-and you would have this shape, -
Yep.
-this high contrast thing, it's like a background,
and then I might want to put my illustrator and start drawing lines on
top of it that matched this perfect flattened out thing.
Exactly.
I would make a ton of video clips in After Effects that just working on that shape.
Yeah, they travel along its lines that,
you can even just be regular content anything that's just like inside of this hexagon.
It's not really a hexagon, is it?
One, two, three, four, five,
six, It is a hexagon. Wow, cool.
Yes. So you just make this perfect hexagon.
You make all of your animations based on that perfect hexagon.
Then, once you put it into Resolume,
that's where the mapping actually happens.
Okay.
Every clip that I have in here, looks the same.
They're not shaped differently.
They're all made for that shape.
Then that's when the mapping starts to happen.
So in Resolume, mapping is a two-stage process.
Okay.
So the first thing you want do,
forget about all of the other video content that you made.
This high-contrast map is like your best friend when you're mapping.
Okay.
So you're going to turn that on,
and let's see if we can do like a little bit of a demonstration.
So if I were to start a new mapping, right?
Add. I'm going to save this as because I don't want anything bad to happen.
Okay. Right. I'm going to add a new screen and display, too.
Can you see how that looks?
It's like not quite lined up.
That is a perfect version of the image.
That's what it actually looks like when you beam it against the sculpture.
Got you.
You're like, "Damn, I have some work to do."
I see some on your shoulder here.
Yeah, it's spilling over,
it's spilling under, it's not to form, right?
So that's what the perfect version looks like.
Then, in Resolume, the way you get it to fit,
is by taking- there's are many different approaches to this.
So one approach to mapping in the simplest approach to mapping,
is if you're close enough in real life,
and your projector's in a really good position,
you're kind of there but not quite.
You can just take everything that you've made and just pinch corners around a little bit,
or any kind of exponentially change certain corners more than others.
If you were like mapping down a wall, let's say,
but the easiest way to get into projection mapping,
the thing that I find the simplest and most straightforward,
is if your object your sculpture itself is just composed of polygons.
Okay.
Right. Individual polygon.
So everything that you see here in this sculpture is a triangle or a square or-
Rhombus.
There are edges that-
Trapezoid.
-connect to each other,
don't have any other weird thing going on, right?
So then in Resolume what it allows you to do,
is take those polygons and individually reassign them in space.
Okay.
So like I said, it's a two-stage process.
So step one, you start with a polygon.
So in this case,
in the first phase,
the first phase is called input selection.
So you're looking at that perfect model,
and you're deciding which pixels from that perfect model you want to draw from.
So you're like cutting out your individual shapes.
You're cutting out your triangle.
So I'm going to go for,
it's going to be the left side of the sculpture.
I'm going to go for that top red triangle.
Okay.
So in input selection,
I go click one edge,
click the other edge, click the third edge.
As soon as you're done, it's going to lock,
and if I've done my work correctly,
there should be a red triangle somewhere on this console.
You just move that around [OVERLAPPING] so it's lining up.
You can take it and move it where it belongs.
Got you.
Which I can't see you right here.
But it's like you just drag it up to. So you're sitting in the concert venue,
and you're looking at the big sculpture,
and you're moving around these individual pieces,
[OVERLAPPING] you can grab their corners,
and you can just get them all into place.
Yeah. say for example,
[OVERLAPPING] like input selection I think it's the hardest thing to understand.
It's like the pixels that you're drawing from.
Yeah.
Right? But ideally, I want this to be just a red square.
I don't want any of that green square in there.
You can see in the bottom,
there's a little bit of it.
[OVERLAPPING] But if I were to expand my input selection,
that's a sloppy input selection.
That's what it looks like an output transformations,
and that's no good, right?
You want clean lines,
colors map to colors.
So that's like how many objects are there? One, two, three, [OVERLAPPING]
One, two, three, four, five,
six times two is 12, 13, 14, 15, 16.
So there's 16 polygons that you map individually.
So that's where you get to the venue,
set up your sculpture, and then you take- and probably the input is already done.
Yeah, I have. I just put my Berklee Performance Center mapping up there,
obviously, it looks bad.
Right.
But then, you just take those corners.
The cool thing is you're not just stuck with a triangle in its proportions,
you can obviously scale it.
That's the transform option of Resolume.
We can scale it, you can rotate it.
So if you are projecting from an angle or from a weird location,
you can still get it to work perfectly on your sculpture?
Yeah, or your Berklee Performance Center mapping was perfect,
except you just have to move everything down a tiny bit, you can do that.
But really where you get,
start to get a lot of power is in the Edit Points option,
and that's where you have individual [OVERLAPPING]
control over the corners of your shoulder.
How long would that take you if you're going to sit down?
How long did it take you to map this out?
You sit down, you just have to do the output transforms for this, how long does it take?
Half an hour? Forty five minutes?
I would say for something like this,
it would take about a half hour.
Yeah. Great.
That sounds reasonable to me.
[MUSIC]