Graphics And Curved LED Walls

[Tim Chrisman]

Hey y'all,

 

I want to see how everyone else is drawing curved LED Walls with custom graphics for client renderings.

 

Currently, what I am doing is one of two things.

 

1: I create several LED screen objects with 1 module width by whatever module height I need then duplicating and rotating those to create a contiguous surface. For example a (roughly) 16x9 LED Wall would have 10 individual led screen objects set at 6 modules tall. What I would then do is take my custom graphic in photoshop, create slices at the dimensions for each of those objects individually and then applying the individual array images one by one. 

 

This is fairly effective; however, it is incredibly time consuming and usually isn't worth the effort unless I'm doing a curved wall with multiple curves.

 

2: I do the above steps to get the dimensions of my wall correct and then I create a polyline with the curve of my wall and extrude it, using that as the surface for my graphic texture. This is effective, but it only works on walls with constant curvature, and if I have another curve thrown in there, the texture does not apply correctly. The other drawback is that you lose out on the realism of seeing where the panels start and stop, being as it is a constant curve.

 

 

What I would really love to see is VW incorporate a curvature feature in the object info pallet that would do all that for you as well as make your array imagery appear continuous along the length of the curved wall. Or if there was a way to create all those individual wall objects together and combine them to form a continuous screen object that you could then apply an array image to.

 

Please drop your thoughts and suggestions on how I can speed up my workflow when it comes to rendering custom walls like this.

[markdd]

As I see it there is only one simple solution.

 

• Build your wall as you have been doing (without your extra extruded geometry).
• Then use the Extract Surface tool (4th mode) to extract all the screen surfaces. Hold down the shift key to make a multiple selection.
• Press enter or use the checkbox in the mode bar.

You should have a bunch of NURBS Surfaces inside a group.

• Enter the group
• Run the Add solid command so that they are all one object.
• Then all you need to do is add your single Image Texture to the combined surfaces and with a little mapping you will be done.

 

A couple of tips:

 

In order to avoid Z fighting of the screen and the solid textures I would put a clear texture into the screens.

Use Cylinder mapping for the Solid Texture. Any other mapping type will give odd results

Edited September 6, 2023 by markdd

[C. Andrew Dunning]

I build the given array a VS4-LED (the Landru Design version of the Spotlight tool) instance for each LED panel.  I then use a Command I created that adjusts image scaling and shifting so that each panel displays a portion of the whole image:

 

Building the array takes a few minutes and applying and adjusting the image takes seconds...

 

[Tim Chrisman]

16 hours ago, C. Andrew Dunning said:

I build the given array a VS4-LED (the Landru Design version of the Spotlight tool) instance for each LED panel.  I then use a Command I created that adjusts image scaling and shifting so that each panel displays a portion of the whole image:

 

Building the array takes a few minutes and applying and adjusting the image takes seconds...

 

 

 

Wow! I've never heard of Landru plugins before but this looks like it exactly solves my problem! Thanks!

 

[C. Andrew Dunning]

2 hours ago, Tim Chrisman said:

Wow! I've never heard of Landru plugins before...

 

Think of them as enhanced versions of those that ship as part of Spotlight.  (For example, in our version of the LED tool, weights and wattages update for "flat" walls as tile counts change.  Our version of the tool also allows for mitered end edges.)

 

Regarding the Tiling Command, because it is pretty rudimentary and has some limitations, it isn't distributed as part of our stock packages.  I do share it with our users who ask - as it is still pretty useful.