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Rendering Low Res LED Walls


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Does anybody have any good tricks for rendering low res LED walls. I have shows with 9mm, 25mm, 50mm, and 75mm LED walls and curtains, and I can't figure out a good way to show that it is not high res walls. I know there is the Landru plugins, which I use all the time. The problem is if you want it to create a low res wall it takes forever to create it and modify it (because it is drawing out 1000s of LED nodes and mapping content on them). I have in the past had my graphics people make me content with a LED mask on it, and this works great except I am not a Photoshop guy, and struggle when creating that mask.

I just want to see what other people have done to make this.

Thanks,

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  • 3 weeks later...

Hello,

If you make an image based texture, add a transparent mask. In the example I will post I used the Tiles transparency and then square shape.

The screens were extrudes with a black fill so that the transparent squares looked at the black extrude.

Cheers,

Peter

Edited by Peter Neufeld
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After playing with this a little more I have discovered the following:

-I like the circles 2 patter

-I change the grout color to white and all the tile colors to black

-I make the absorption Color white

-I made the grout Width 50%

This gave me an even better looking low res LED wall FX. I attached a picture to show my results.

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I will make a screen with tubes, with a 1/2"w tube with 1" spacing.  I sometimes have to play with spacing and tube numbers to get it to work.  It does take a bit to render when you have lots of small screens, or several larger ones but it really helps sow that the screens are low-res (mine are also blow through) and this way there is no question that you can see through them when they are dark.

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This i perhaps something that VW should be looking at for the next release given the prevalence of low res and semi transparent LED products in the industry?

 

I've found the only way to produce good effects without seriously affecting render time is in Cinema 4D rather than vectorworks.  Here you can construct the screen from an array of extrudes which can be placed into a Null, you can then apply an material to the Null which maps it across the whole array.  It gives excellent results and the material can also use a video source for dynamic effects.

 

Maybe some way of applying a Texture over a group of objects in VW would be the way forward?

 

Example shows an array of spheres which were produced in VW as a flat rectangular array then placed in a Null in C4D.  I applied movement in C4D to create the 'waves' effect for animation and then a material across the Null (in this case a simple image based Luminance which was also animated).  I've stripped a lot of the other geometry out of this to make it suitable for posting here.

 

 

Arora Ballroom 2.jpg

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  • 4 months later...

Hey,

 

This is awesome.  I have also been looking for something similar!  Next question, is it possible to accurately render a specific pixel pitch?  I think this would be really helpful for showing to clients.  Especially as they have a hard time conceptualizing what different pitches will look like/mean.

 

Thanks

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 5/5/2014 at 11:34 AM, ChadL said:

Does anybody have any good tricks for rendering low res LED walls. I have shows with 9mm, 25mm, 50mm, and 75mm LED walls and curtains, and I can't figure out a good way to show that it is not high res walls. I know there is the Landru plugins, which I use all the time. The problem is if you want it to create a low res wall it takes forever to create it and modify it (because it is drawing out 1000s of LED nodes and mapping content on them). I have in the past had my graphics people make me content with a LED mask on it, and this works great except I am not a Photoshop guy, and struggle when creating that mask.

I just want to see what other people have done to make this.

Thanks,

Chad,

The transparencies are how I generally go about doing this. Possibly using an extracted surface would be another.  Of course, using another application like C4D would be ideal but that is not going to get you there currently. 

 

You mentioned that having masks created for you by graphics people in the past has worked for you but that you are "not a Photoshop guy". I would propose this as a quick solution for you: 

 

I do this all the time and my colleagues laugh at me because "it's not the way you do things", however, it does work very well and you can do it immediately. Creating a mask is nothing more than drawing some relatively simple geometry. Of course you can do this in Illustator or similar programs very accurately, but then you need the program and you need to invest the time to learn to use it. We already have a program that does exactly that and you already know how to use it. Draw your masks in VW. It's extremely quick and you don't have to have any additional skill sets or applications. 

 

Assuming you are working with a rectangular screen (though it really doesn't matter) draw a rectangle in plan view the size of your finished screen and extrude it   Apply the texture image you plan to use to the extrusion. Then start creating your mask however you would like to see it using simple lines or perhaps more accurately using polygons. Don't forget the duplicate array tool. Render this achieve your final look and then export as an image file using the "draw marquee" option. The cursor will snap to your end points. This image then becomes the basis for your new screen texture. It just takes a couple of minutes and frankly, I can do this way quicker than most graphics guys in their programs. 

 

 I suggest either doing this in a separate drawing file or assign these objects to a specific class or layer so that you can quickly create additional masked images as necessary by simply changing the initial texture. 

 

Just a thought. 

 

 

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