blog 2023 4 min read
How to accurately map your next projection project design
Whether you’re putting on a touring theatre production, or looking to light up the Burj Khalifa, projections offer an impressive way to fill a space with light and moving images. It’s rarely as simple as pointing a projector at a wall and switching it on. Projection Mapping tools like Mapping Matter allows you to adapt your projections to fit even the most complex surfaces perfectly. With Mapping Matter now available in disguise Cloud, learn how you can take full control over your next creative project.
How Projection Mapping works
Mapping Matter allows your team to recreate a venue or physical space within disguise’s Cloud platform. Every inch of your planned canvas can be accessed digitally from anywhere in the world, giving you a head start in planning and designing your projection.
This is a major new advantage for teams building AV installation projects. By enabling the visualisation of early designs in a shared space, it’s easier than ever for potential issues to be highlighted and amended, allowing these creative and technical teams to collaborate and build impressive installation projects and deliver them to perfection.
Introduction to Mapping Matter
Accessing Mapping Matter through your browser, you’ll be able to import your venue from a 3D graphics tool like Blender. Once uploaded, you’ll be able to customize the space in a number of ways, adding objects and features that your projection will interact with. You’ll also be able to specify the brand and type of projector that you plan to use, adjusting lumen settings so that you can get as accurate a pre-visualization as possible.
Zakk Hein, Technical Manager and Creative Associate at Luke Halls Studio, uses Mapping Matter to get all team members and clients on the same page:
“Mapping Matter is my tool of choice because of how well it fits into our creative process. This is my only process now for specifying a rig for production. The 3D model downloads and data output for your rig give you instant results the moment you get onsite, and both your team and the client can feel confident and involved at every step of the journey,” says Hein.
Learn more about Luke Halls Studio
In-depth analysis
Mapping Matter also offers photometric analysis to help teams make the most of their lighting and video projections. Taking into account precise details input by the user, the programme is able to deliver an overview of the lighting levels, giving you even more control over your project.
Flexible approaches to your final projection
While many teams will benefit from the ability to add different assets and build a projection solution that gives them total and precise coverage of complex shapes and areas, others will be more focused on the areas they don’t want to project onto.
Mapping Matter has a solution for this, too. Using a reverse projection mapping approach, users can choose the specific areas of their set that they want to project onto. When projectors then show the video content, they’ll only cover the specified areas - avoiding overflow onto unwanted areas.
Simpler workflows
Projection mapping within disguise’s Cloud is an intuitive and flexible process that can be approached in the way that best suits your needs. By bringing together a variety of collaborative tools under one browser-based system, disguise has further simplified workflows for the creation of innovative and visually impressive projects.
As well as being accessible alongside cloud-based tools Drive and Previz, Mapping Matter content can be easily transferred into disguise’s software, making it easier than ever to plan an entire project and then realize it using disguise’s render engines and media servers.
Learn more about disguise Cloud
Projection mapping for live events
Previsualised projection mapping offers real advantages to those working in live events, where preparation time in a venue is often very limited. disguise’s tools allow for creative and technical teams to work together to prepare ahead of onsite production, taking the unique dimensions of a concert hall or theatre and adapting existing set designs to fit. Mapping Matter will ensure teams can understand what their projection will look like from every angle, be it the front row centre or way back in the cheap seats - allowing every audience member to enjoy the show to the fullest.
Projection mapping for location-based experiences
As location-based immersive experiences continue to flourish, Mapping Matter can play an important role in ensuring visitors get the most from their trip. At London’s BBC Earth Experience, attendees are surrounded by towering images from some of the BBC’s most impressive nature programming. The space itself is dynamic and interesting, with the shape of each room differing and offering unique challenges to the creative team as they designed the experience. Mapping Matter played a key role in shaping the final result, allowing the team to plan every inch of the venue, and understand which angles work best to deliver high quality images that wouldn’t be disrupted by visitors walking closely by them.
Discover Mapping Matter in the Cloud
The addition of Mapping Matter to disguise’s cloud-based collaborative tools opens up a wealth of opportunities for creative and technical teams across different industries. Each individual tool works in unison with those around it to help you understand every inch of your creative projects.
