About two years ago i felt the urge to do something with videoprojections. I have been deejaying for quit some years so from time to time i already got in touch with visuals.
In my hometown some crazy people with a good idea had a project running called 'cinematiq vzw'. They do (amongst other stuff) outdoor projections of movies from a converted firetruck called: '
cinemobiel'. They also did visuals and for a few months i was 'dropping by' at their sessions at local parties after i've been deejaying and started to play along the faders and buttons. Those were fun moments so i wanted more.
Around that time Etienne de Crecy went on tour with his show boxes designed by
1024architecture. After seeing it i knew that was the thing i wanted to do.
SQUARE3 / E. De Crecy Tests from
1024 on
Vimeo.
So i started looking for good software. I had been using Resolume with Cinemobiel but i had to be able to create a different kind of visuals to do projection mapping (at that time i don't think they called it projection mapping already :) ). I tested a lot of software but found the combination of
Resolume (vj-software),
VPT (an open source video projection tool) and
quartz composer (part of apple developer pack, that handels visual content) to fit me most. In addition some
Processing (open source programming language) but since my program language skills are below average i'm not doing much then 'copypasteadjusting'. Also some Adobe products (Photoshop, After effects, ...) to adjust content.
By testing i got from projection on boxes to projection on mini-vj-setups (scale models of imagenary vj-setups :) ). As seen in the video's below....
First attempts vj-setup with mapping
Soft: VPT 5.1, Quartz Composer (with syphon plugin), Gimp for masks
Hard: Macbook, Nec projector, Korg Nanokontrol. (And some styrofoam, cardboard and playmobildude)
Music: Bassnectar - Where is my mind (Bassnectar Remix)
Btw: awesome that already more then 3000 people checked it out :) :) !
There are more of my videos to see at my
youtubechannel. But since they decided to put ads on my videos (and i have to prove i own the videos for them to take the ads away (WTF?)) i've moved to vimeo... Perhaps i'll still use it for raw footage, perhaps i won't.
Inspired by the Summerscreen letters done by David Vandenbogaerde (who teached me the basics of visuals and mapping btw!). I decided to do the same for ladybirds in a party-atmosphere. The letters are made out of insulation material. We used 2 projectors for the letters and 1 projector for 'regular' vj-ing connected through a matrox triplehead to a macbook.
Every letter has its own layer in VPT with it's own individual mask. I took a photo from the point of view of each letter and took it into photoshop. The letter was made white and everything around it black. To get content on the letters i use a second computer and capture the video out of that computer into the macbook. On a second laydybirds i captured the video out of a videomixer so i was able to get a camera, a dvj and a computer.
