garageCube

[kevw8504]

Folders for outputs

I create many internal loops and end up with a lot of outputs and would love to be able to create folders within.
I have attached images of one of our permanent outdoor installation with 12x 20,000 lumen epson projectors runnning mad mapping on a Mac Studio.
Additionally I would love to see a little energy put into the OBJ calibration as we use this tool constantly and would love some other options like cross hair and maybe a little improvement on snapping. I could more specifically describe the issues we run into if anyone are interested.

https://www.blockhouse.media/projects/eos

Thanks for your efforts we are big fans and built our business on mad mapper.

[franz]

please elaborate a bit on the enhancements you wish for 3d calibration, and we'll see what we can do

[kevw8504]

Thanks for the reply I want to explain a little how we do this to help understand better. So over the years we have built a workflow that is a little different. You might be able to tell from the photo but we split our buildings into smaller obj chunks that are a slightly larger than the area that each projector covers.
Each building chunk gets its own output then that gets published internally and looped to a surface that then goes out the projector. This allows us to do our blending and any minor finally adjustments or warping on the surface.


Issues
1. we have a lot of trouble being able to see the actually points on the building.
This is situationally dependent and we would love some options to select different colors for the selection point, increase and decrease the center point possibly, having a X&Y cross hair might be a good option. different tools for different parts of the building.
Often we use a drone to fly hover close to the building and get the point exactly on the portion but even then it can be difficult to see at times.

2. Often we will get the points to snap but on flatter buildings Z axis often struggles and it seems to snap correctly but flipped. This will cause us to just see black which I assume is the back of the faces. This happens a lot and often it involves us usually having to arbitrarily selecting a z point we may not have to force it to snap close then add some more points and delete that later or move it around a little till it looks right. This is something we would like to understand more.

Questions
We would also like to know if using our loop thru surface method as I described at the beginning could become a issue. Sometimes we end up with 12-16 outputs this results in a lot of internal loops. We haven't ran into many issues but in the background is there a limit to this or quality loss we may need to worry about as we move into the future with higher resolutions?

This may be a system dependent thing, we always useable silicon Mac Studio Ultra or Mac Mini Pro with the highest chips for most of our installs and will continue to use the most recent as they release. Our source files are very high resolution for example the one you see in this photo is 15600x2600 which gets split between 12x 20k epson on the building, output to 3 FX4 HDR with custom EDID names FX4A, FX4B, FX4C. This allows mad mapper to hold the output order every boot.

Any thoughts or conversations surrounding these things we would love to discuss, these are permanent outdoor installs and we are always looking to improve and update our methods. Feel free to ask any questions and we would love to have a conversation anytime.
We run Epson's entire booth at Infocom off of madmapper so if you ever make it to the conferences let us know. We would love to show you more how we are using your product.

[kevw8504]

please elaborate a bit on the enhancements you wish for 3d calibration, and we'll see what we can do

Ping

[franz]

Hi Kevin, I'll try to answer as precisely as I can.

Firstly, wow, your setup file is really amazing. We really love when users are pushing the limits of the software.
And you are. Bravo.

However, looking at your sample project, I don't really think it is suitable for calibration in the first place.
The building consists of 4 different parallel planes, if I had to map it, I would NOT calibrate through 3d object,
I'd go the old classical way.
The calibration is more suitable for 3d objects that really have a lot volumetric complexities, seen from an angle
where there's a minimum of Z depth. You've noticed that when there's not enough depth, the calibration algo will give a lot of error.
That's normal and that's the main issue with calibration algos.

However is sorta DOES work for your projects, so let's assume that.

1. There's a "show video cursor" that will just does that, and you can adjust the crossair amount. We could add a preference to make the points bigger tho'. They are fixed size, so I assume if you output at 4k they will be much smaller that at 1080p.

2. As I said before, for the calibration process to work you need quite a bit of Z depth, however a flat facade doesn't have enough depth. That's a limitation, all the more as you're cropping smaller bits of the facade, for even less depth.
If you want to understand how it works under the hood, have a look here:
https://docs.opencv.org/4.x/d9/d0c/grou ... 63b5af1d7b
https://docs.opencv.org/4.x/d5/d1f/cali ... vePnP.html

3. Internal loops are just a render, so they should not kill your computer'performance. For 3 4k outputs (splitted by FX4), I'd go on a big PC sporting a 4090. Haven't tested the MacStudio ultra, it should handle ProRes really well. If you're using HAP, you could try on a PC4090 to see the difference in performance.

Hope this helps,
frZ

[kevw8504]

Hi Kevin, I'll try to answer as precisely as I can.

Firstly, wow, your setup file is really amazing. We really love when users are pushing the limits of the software.
And you are. Bravo.

However, looking at your sample project, I don't really think it is suitable for calibration in the first place.
The building consists of 4 different parallel planes, if I had to map it, I would NOT calibrate through 3d object,
I'd go the old classical way.
The calibration is more suitable for 3d objects that really have a lot volumetric complexities, seen from an angle
where there's a minimum of Z depth. You've noticed that when there's not enough depth, the calibration algo will give a lot of error.
That's normal and that's the main issue with calibration algos.

However is sorta DOES work for your projects, so let's assume that.

1. There's a "show video cursor" that will just does that, and you can adjust the crossair amount. We could add a preference to make the points bigger tho'. They are fixed size, so I assume if you output at 4k they will be much smaller that at 1080p.

2. As I said before, for the calibration process to work you need quite a bit of Z depth, however a flat facade doesn't have enough depth. That's a limitation, all the more as you're cropping smaller bits of the facade, for even less depth.
If you want to understand how it works under the hood, have a look here:
https://docs.opencv.org/4.x/d9/d0c/grou ... 63b5af1d7b
https://docs.opencv.org/4.x/d5/d1f/cali ... vePnP.html

3. Internal loops are just a render, so they should not kill your computer'performance. For 3 4k outputs (splitted by FX4), I'd go on a big PC sporting a 4090. Haven't tested the MacStudio ultra, it should handle ProRes really well. If you're using HAP, you could try on a PC4090 to see the difference in performance.

Hope this helps,
frZ

Thanks for the reply, appreciate all the extra information. All of our content is Apple ProRes and playback seems to be no issue even with our 15,600x2600 plate. Most of the time we can get enough z to snap and there are several massive benefits to this workflow. If you take a look at the pillars for example basically we design for everything behind the pillars and use separate OBJ files for each component those then get layered as normal quads in a back to front order. Then we use the quads for some minor warping and blending. My origional post started mentioning folders would be handy in the outputs window when it comes to organization.

Anxiously awaiting the new timeline version would love to get on a beta list if possible, have a new project with almost 40 projectors all 4k 16,000 lumen. PM if there is a possibility to continue this conversation.

[franz]

Hi Kevin Benoit will contact you by email, cheers