Albert Hwang

Latest Vid:

Here’s some rationale that goes deeper into the technical side of what is happening in this video.

The top image is of the camera setup. This is how to capture the scene that is later theatricalize. The bottom image is the projector setup. A few things to note here: The camera setup (location, orientation and zoom) should be identical to the projection setup. This ensures that nothing weird will happen with depth distortions.The overall idea is that the camera documents 3d space, translates into 2d data (as film), and the projection will translate it back into a 3d document.

The first step is to capture some video. It might be useful in this step to document the distance between the subject and the camera so as to save time later on in the process. This could either be done with guidelines on the floor (we call ‘em spike marks in the industry), or just some sort of notation on a piece of paper.

The camera is then replaced with the projector – the exact location, orientation and zoom. When the camera indeed matches up with the projector, the projector will throw the exact image the camera received. Although light is being broadcast in that direction, it’s not going to stop until it hits something. To stop the light and to produce an image, a theatrical flat – maybe a 4′x8′ white wood panel – must be placed in the same literal location of where the actor was standing when the camera captured his image.And, of course, the best way to fully activate an actor is to have the rest of the playworld treat him as if he’s actually there: dialogue, violence, romance, etc…

Most projects will demand that your actors move around on stage. The same principle applies.

Instead a motionless theatrical flat, the flat is wheeled around on stage – which lends a lot of interesting potential for convention: who gets to move the flat around on stage, how will they move it, and what kind of story will it tell?

All sounds good, cept some of you may be asking a very interesting question: what about camera distortion? Don’t projectors distort things also?

Cameras indeed distort things. If an object is ten feet away from you standing one foot tall, that same object will appear to be half it’s size at twenty feet away from you. Because the camera picks up a 2d image, it can’t tell the difference, and just makes things bigger when they’re closer to the camera, and smaller when further away.

Projectors also distort. If I you move a screen closer to or further away from the projector, the image will get bigger the when the distance is bigger, and smaller when the distance is smaller.

So, something walks away from the camera / projector. As it walks away, the camera makes the image smaller. But, as the surface (the theatrical flat or foam core) gets further away from the projector, the image gets bigger. Both distortions serve to cancel each other out.

So what’s all this about Machinima?

Machinima is a type of cinema that is filmed entirely in a virtual world. To get a better understanding of what I mean, take a look at what’s happening over at machinima.com, or just do a quick youtube search.

The next step on this project is to find a machinima director who’s would like to build a scene to very specific technical specifications (size, camera distance & angle, all those things). If you think that’s you, get in contact w/ me.

— Read more

So it turns out I didn’t realize how geeky I was until I found that I enjoy working with CAD. CAD, for you non-geek folk out there, is ‘computer aided design’ – or a drafting computer program. It helps me out when I want to build and play around with design ideas for the mirage.

I was forced to start CADing when I wanted to get my work done for me by a machine, rather by hand. Here are a few images of the AutoCAD file I’ve been working with:

* Full view. The rays coming out of the origin represent the rays of light coming out of the projector’s focal point.

* Up close image of the field. Every ray of light intersects one and only one dot – the dot placement was randomized by a computer – well, mostly randomized. I manually edited dot location when they landed too close to one another.

* The final pattern, with all the markup taken away. This is the pattern that I emailed Canal Plastics to get a quote.

I’m going to cut it in a 2′ x 3′ sheet of 3/8″ plexiglass. The sheet will run about $60 and the cutting $65.  I didn’t get a quote on the construction, but I’d assume another $60 or so on that.  So, I just gotta wait on my tax return. The end result of all of this (*knock on wood) is a 3d renderer that I can put my hand into. Sw337.

— Read more

These videos explain an idea I’ve been workin on lately. They’re mostly so that I can market this idea around – to share with my collaborators so that we can built on it. Eventually I’d like to put these ideas into a theater, but hey, that’d be way off in the future.

— Read more

Today my mind was wandering and I came up with the phrase:

1337er than a 2 liter.

I’m kinda happy about that phrase. It’s my facebook status (Albert is 1337er than…).

Anyhow, while looking around the net to see whether or not anybody else came up with that phrase before me, I came across an urban dictionary definition of 1337ies:

The breakfast of h4x0rz

Shadow01 ate his 1337ies this morning, look at him pwn noobs!

When I saw this I died, and couldn’t help but photoshop a box of 1337ies. I found this nice little tutorial on the Wheaties logo font.

This particular image of SWK comes from “The Star Wars Kid Strikes Back (And Settles Out Of Court)”.

I’ve also realized that this is a cool little template that I’m good to share w/ everyone. The photoshop file is pretty straightforward, so download it if you’ve got a geek in mind who you think deserves the to be on the cover of 1337ies.

— Read more

A while back, I made a prototype idea for something called the mirage. The mirage is a Wiremap, where the wires are replaced with streams of water. When I came up with it, I imagined it would be ten feet tall – the size of a small room, so that people could dance in it.

I decided instead to start small and work my way up. I’ve spent the last couple of weeks playing around with plastics – plexiglass, specifically. Fortunately, over in Chinatown, there’s this awesome little shop known as the Canal Plastics Center. They sell everything you’d ever need. They also custom build your designs, as well as provide a high precision laser cutting service.

At first, I was excited to just by the raw material and do all the work myself. But after all the testing, it turns out that I have neither the tools nor the knowledge to actually accomplish what I want to accomplish. I tried to drill holes with a drill gun, but they’re never perfectly perpendicular – I tried to joint two pieces together, but the jig saw cuts I made can’t really compare to their table saw cuts.

I sent off an email earlier today for a quote for a test hunk of plastic. I wanna see how well these cuts can perform.

— Read more

Phedhex proudly presents:

http://www.phedhex.com/wiremap/

This page leaves me with the satisfying feeling that the Wiremap has a definite home on the net.  It’s a concise site with all the info and the media.

Of course, there are updates I’d like to add sometime this week, but it always feels better to update a page that’s up than to update an idea floating around in your head.

Anyhow, check it out.

— Read more

So the nice folks at Adnauseam Lyceum (or see their myspace) are hosting an event called Vernissage:

It’s a small one night event coming up this Saturday, where I’ll be exhibiting the Wiremap (the smaller foam core version). If you’re in the area, swing by and say hi.

— Read more

Thought the Wiremap 256 was cool? Try a Wiremap 783!

Earlier today I got an email from Elliot Woods, the undergrad at Manchester University who had a couple months back expressed interest in building a mammoth Wiremap. He runs an annual not-for-profit music festival called Pangaea, where they built and shared their work:

Yeah… It’s kinda big.

They got the system up and were rendering 3d before the event – but as soon as the subwoofers came on, the projectors jiggled out of alignment, obscuring the 3d image.  Instead, they just threw Milkdrop onto it (musta looked kinda like iTunes on my Wiremap 256… but much bigger, or course).

Seeing photos of a Wiremap this big really inspires me to build more work for it.  Live motion capture could be projected into the Wiremap – so that you could watch a digital image of your body in 3d space.  Or maybe you could play tennis.  Or maybe even 3d machinima?

— Read more

I’m currently involved in a project that is working on theatricalizing the concept of Avatar and / or Cyberspace. My head has been swimming around this problem for quite some time, and after some good ol’ R&D, here’s some of what I came up with:

These ideas are to be seen mostly as a proof of concept, and I think they’ll be more compelling when they actually make it on stage.

That said, I think there’s a lot of potential for choreography between the human body and digital forms. Yesterday I realized how cool it would be to crossover from machinima into theater. I wonder what that would be called.

Oh, in the vid, I mention my email. Here it is again: hwang [dot] al [at] gmail.

— Read more

So, since the Digg hit, my wiki entry for the Wiremap got destroyed by spam. I don’t know enough php or sql or whatever it is I need to know to recover my document, so I’m considering rebuilding it in a static page.

I’ve been in contact Elliot Woods over in Manchester who is interested in building a very large wiremap for a not for profit music festival, called Pangaea. Last year at Pangaea, they made the world’s largest 3d dot matrix display, and this year they’re looking to (in my estimation) up the ante.

Email contents include blender, maxmsp, lots of nylon rope, steel frames, and the use of three theater quality projectors.

w00t.

— Read more