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make projections work - looking for partners who are familiar with custom light symbols and sources


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dear all.

 

this is my first post in here. I am wondering why Computerworks doesn't implement working projectors in spotlight for years. they do have the ability to do that - there are working light-sources in Vectorworks, so why no projectors?! ANYWAY.

It's interesting for me to have projectors with light sources in it to check the projection-geometry e. g. for a mapping... "what will happen if...", am I able to project on that wall if my projector is placed here...

 

My idea for now is:

- have working lamps (with the body of a projector)

- create gobos with test patterns in it

- build an excel to convert the beam-angle to an throw-ratio

- find a way to implement lens-shift as well...? maybe with custom light sources?!

 

I would be very happy to find someone who's interested to join me and help me with that thing or maybe someone who's telling me there a way to do what you want (I don't know)

 

thanks in advance and have a great day :)

 

 

 

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Vectorworks Spotlight has a Video Screen tool that addresses some of what you are asking about. If you drill down into the object Info Palette you will find that it works out offset angle and percentages based on throw distance and projected image format. It's useful as a guide.

 

You can of course make a Spotlight Instrument and project a gobo image. If you were to shutter around the screen or object you wanted to map in Open GL then it is very possible to extract the shutter image from the instrument and work out the shift ratio that way. Its longwinded and I am sure there are much better tools for mapping projection out there.

 

Let me know if this is of interest....

Edited by markdd
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you're right - it's a very complicated way to make it work: light coming out of a projector!

 

the video screen tool which is in spotlight has got all the important possibilities in it, which are necessary to work with boring projections on a flat surfaces. but in my opinion this application got very rare during the past years. to calculate a throw ratio or a softedge I don't need Vectorworks - I can use a calculator for this!

What I need is to see the behaviour of the projected images on complicated mappings on cars, stages and buildings! to do my job on a proper way I need to draw a cad-plan anyway but I don't want to do the work twice and use another tool for visualisation of the projection.

 

and it's getting worse if you think about this:

- Vectorworks is able to render lights (with gobos) and shadows in a proper way...

- there is a video screen tool in Vectorworks which has got all the needed functionalities but there is not light coming out of the projector...

 

it would be perfect to match these two tools ;)

 

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