inkscape->ildsos does a great job with single frame line drawings
LSX does a great job with abstracts
lasercam does a very good job with high contrast/simple videos and animations.
at the end of the day, it's still a ton of work and time. i would love to have a ilda render plugin for lightwave 3d.
Originally Posted by
planters
Dammit Dammit Dammit!
This is what I've been saying all along and its not as simple as Tony's equations. It's the content that makes or breaks this whole endeavor. That entire show, as good as it is, is projected from a single projector thru a scrim and unless the scrim is stadium sized, a 5-20W RGB with a decent scanner would do it. Ten minutes of that production quality would easily pay for the projector.
CONTENT PRODUCTION IS TOO HARD!
It's a little like the early days of video game production when each scene/character had to be laboriously drawn from scratch. Steve Milani did a 3D Airport segment (nice by the way) that very few could or would do and to refine and complete this into a full show would take A LOT of time. And then what, a ship entering a port city? Each show is singular and there is so little stock to build from. I believe it when the experienced members say it has become much easier, but to me the tools are still cumbersome despite the fact that it pretty much comes down to line drawing.
It would be refreshing if there were interpretation programs that would allow content from live, recorded and CG video and the vast library of Google still images to be projected by single point lasers. Maybe using FFT filters to remove high frequency content and some optimization algorithms to prioritize according to contrast and to reduce scanner velocity. I believe Drlava's control software projected live video, so this can be done.
A DJ mixes and presents music and there is a lot of available music out there. A laser DJ has access to maybe a dozen shows, can play a sequence of geometrical shapes and that's about it. I am not talking about the role of the lighting controller who may or may not be the laser DJ. I am not minimizing the importance of lighting, but I feel this is more about the venue rather than content.
I don't have the mathematical or programing skills to do this, but I do think something like this needs to be done.
suppose you're thinkin' about a plate o' shrimp. Suddenly someone'll say, like, plate, or shrimp, or plate o' shrimp out of the blue, no explanation. No point in lookin' for one, either. It's all part of a cosmic unconciousness.