LaserCam: A brand new live webcam to laser projection application

[drlava]

dream, when I gave you lasercam for testing, the first thing I said was that your particular application, tracing a bunch of leaves falling, was not appropriate use of lasercam and I explained a better way to do it, but gave you lasercam anyway just so you could see for yourself. So far, I'm not sure why you are diving into lasercam without understanding the basics, or asking questions.

It appears you need help, but are approaching the situation not as someone looking for help, but as someone passing judgement. The best way to get help is simply to ask. Your assumption about compression artifacts is incorrect, I've seen great results from reasonably compressed video. There are multiple resolution settings in lasercam which will affect the output, and you can choose them based on the detail and proceeding power of your computer. Understanding these is important for getting the best out of the tool.

I'd like to help, but so far, it's hard to get to the bottom of your issue, because I see no questions.

What do you do for a day job?

[drlava]

Hey, no problem. I'm glad you mentioned Blender, there are a few threads here on using a Blender 'Pantograph' renderer and a custom version of it to create DXF sequences of your animations, then these can be converted to ILDA for better quality output. Have a look, it may be what you need if you're using Blender. Also, since you have LSX I can create a sample leaf falling animation to demonstrate its 'particle system' capabilities.

[mixedgas]

Bad Apple video is traced with Marcan's Openlase, which you will have to adapt and compile yourself from source code. That process is non-trivial.

Steve

[drlava]

To get the same or better results you can set lasercam to hirez mode and screencap the vid, that bad apple is an uusual vid as it's black and white and very easy to trace.

[swamidog]

any video tracing application is dependent on the quality of the input video. with proper attention to this, and a some tweaking of the optimization settings, it's possible to quite excellent results with lasercam.

You're right, after changing some settings like the detail level I could get better or same results with LaserCam.
The "edgy" silhouettes are still smoothed which I don't like, though it looks the same as OpenLase, so maybe it's how any tracer for laser projection works.
What OpenLase seems to be able to do with the above video, which I haven't be able to mimic in LaserCam, is tracing the tiny silhouettes like stars. They get ignored or removed by LaserCam.
And I've tested more stuff than that "bad apple" video. I guess that's part of the optimization and needed if you're tracing a real life video, but for simple monochrome or cartoony videos, you might need that traced too. What option should I be looking for to avoid such small things disappearing after tracing?
Thanks.

If you want, I can post screenshots of my current LaserCam settings later.

[swamidog]

your images are quite complicated. i wouldn't expect them to project well or be flicker free under the best of circumstances.

what galvos are you using?

I don't think that's the problem in my case.
http://imgur.com/a/uDtTG#rRIl7Ky


Okay, which settings? I just updated my old post with images and ILDs.

Your animation is very nice, btw. And the tracing is good.
But it doesn't show anything different from what I've been able to get, and it has the overall "curvy" feel which I'm trying to avoid and which I mentioned before.Though for your animations, it makes sense that it's curvy and smooth, it wasn't originally created with a 3d program but real life video, so not removing detail and making things "curvy" would result in too many points.

[swamidog]

i'm at work right now, but i'll be able to take a look this evening.

I uploaded the ILD files, you can have a look. I think I set the framerate to 30 fps and galvo speed to 40k in LaserCam.

[colouredmirrorball]

Sure, it would most definitely be more accurate if the original 3d animations were done in LSX or other program. But better can mean different things. Does LSX supports all the things Blender particles do, like controlling them with force fields, making them follow a curve path? Even if so, I'm very used to Blender. And I can set up a complex particle system in few minutes with it. So to me personally, this pipeline is "better", overall.

Not entirely sure what you mean with curve path, but something like that is implemented.
Force fields and such aren't natively implemented but I got decent results with expressions. They are a little complicated though... I imagine you could follow a few Blender tutorials and press the right buttons and have the particles doing the most complex stuff, but in LSX you'd need the math behind it as well.
A falling leaf is really hard to do anyway since aerodynamics aren't easy equations. Especially not since the leaf is a complex shape.

[colouredmirrorball]

Where did you get the idea of a lsx vs blender argument? They are completely separate programs that can coexist in the same workflow. Who knows, in the future it might be possible to send Blender data to LSX in real time...

[dzodzo]

A falling leaf is really hard to do anyway since aerodynamics aren't easy equations. Especially not since the leaf is a complex shape.

i hereby demand you to come up with an expression for aerodynamic falling leaf

(that should entertain him for a while...)