Mirage Construction

/

This past week or so I've been consumed in building this thing... here's a little update as to how everything is coming together: Top of mirage

Top of Mirage

Here are two images of the top of the mirage. It's a container completely built with 3/8" Acrylite (basically Plexiglas, just a different company). It's two by three feet, with 6 inch tall sides. The joints are (hopefully) waterproof, and the main sheet of Acrylite has 128 holes laser cut into it. Here's a closeup of the holes:

Close up on Holes

The sooty black marks, I think, are burn marks from the laser cutter. Cool, no?

The plan is that this structure will be elevated by these four booms:

Booms from far

*Sorry about the image quality there - this photo was taken in the poor lighting conditions of my basement, so I had to Photoshop it the best I could. What you're looking at is four clear tubes being glued down to circles of Acrylite. The chairs and metal rods taped to the Acrylite rods are there to keep everything in place while the glue dries. Here's a closeup image:

Booms close up

And what's the plan for the falling water? I was going to build another Acrylite structure to catch all the water falling through those holes, but that turned out to be way too expensive. So, instead of hours of work on needlessly gluing and waterproofing expensive plexi, I swung by Target and bought myself a kiddie pool:

Kiddie pool

Word... Word... When I was blowing this thing up in my living room, I realized that this is a hazardously large amount of water. I had planned on doing all this in the studio on the second floor, but imagine the mess this thing would cause if it started leaking. This is why operations have moved to the basement. I think it's a true mark of geekdom when your work forces you to work in the basement.

The water pump is in the mail, and should be arriving soon. It is a Fountain Tech FT-1300 from Fountain Mountain. I need a few more pieces of plastic from Canal Plastics to mount the top piece to the legs. Apart from that, I'm ready to roll.

Model Box Projections

/

Latest Vid: [youtube]RD4a68NP7w4[/youtube]

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.

CAD for Laser Cuts

/

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.

full_view.gif

* 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.

closeup.gif

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

field.gif

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.

1337IES!!!1

/

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.

1337ies_star_wars_kid 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.