Lightform Tutorial Good vs Great Projection Mapping

[Music] hi my name is chris and welcome to my channel chris tries mixed media in today's tutorial we will discuss three principles of projection mapping and also how to implement them with the life form these principles will help us move from this to this so before we talk about these three principles we need to understand the core part from where they are coming from once we understand what we need to achieve it will be simple to identify things that we can improve to move our projection mappings from good to great so there is this underlying contract between the viewer and the creator i first heard about this one from an awesome youtuber what who happens to be a professional visual artist that works in theaters i will put the link to his channel below this underlying contract states that as long as the creator maintains the illusion and captivates the viewer agrees to enters the for the creator's frame and be moved by the creator and his creations [Music] now let's look closer to this lion head as we can see here we have a projection that is mapped on this low poly paper line head if you want to see more about this i will also put a link in the corner where you can see the the full project now in this case there is this uh illusion that we have this glowing neon effect this is an effect from the light from creator that is somehow glows the lion's head as you can see here the principle that we already talked is uh is not there and by that i mean if you can look closer you will see that this light this neon effect does not extend to the lion's head it also extends to the wall beneath it and by doing so it breaks the contract because it breaks the illusion that the lion head is somehow magically illuminated so the first principle we are going to talk about today is when projection mapping on objects always and always be sure that your projection does not spill over from the object itself because when we do that we break the illusion that the object is somehow magically glowing or moving or coming to life and the user can see that is merely a projector that is doing that work [Music] now let's go to lifeform creator and see the image we're going to work so i'm using the pen tool because as i said before we need to have perfect shapes and as you can see here being white on white it's not great but one of the things you can do to improve your scan is to create additional light before scanning and then juggling with the brightness brightness as zero will be what the image will be without the projector and brightness at 100 would be with the full intensity of the projector lighting itself add it i'm going to use the pen tool because it's it's the most accurate one you can also start with the wizards tools the automatic ones and then refine but here we have uh a low polygon lan head so basically there are clean lines and what i'm going to do here is first create the shape and then i will refine it by using the preview mode and always checking what we see here with what we have on what we have on uh on the screen and also in real life the best part about lifeform is even though the scans aren't perfect because the camera isn't and the algorithm also has sometimes mismatches that they are pixel perfect and by that i mean where you see here that one of the shapes and this is where it also be so you can basically just scan and work on your laptop without being on the actual place there and then when you get back you only need to refine the areas i'm not going to go into details right here because i already created a tutorial regarding this i will i will put a link up in the top right corner and also below so yes let's force forward this and create our perfect shape [Music] foreign so let's hear again this was the before it was kinda okay but this is way way better now not only that it goes perfectly to the edges of the lion but also as you can see here because it does not over spill we have this beautiful effect where the neon also bounces back to the wall and creates a certain kind of atmosphere that we can do indirectly and i encourage you to try experimenting with this not only to project something on the objects but also that room for the light to bounce and create such beautiful effects as you can see here when the light's head is glowing in those areas it also glows a little bit by the loud bouncing and it's it'll it's like the lens head is itself glowing and also that uh that light is radiating to its surrounding and creating that aura and also is if you look closely you can see there are some differences so once again let's look at the lens head before and not only look because there was spillage of the neon effect on the wall itself but also it was way too fast way too many effects and it's like there is one principle regarding design and that is you want to create contrast not conflict every time you have things that are on let's say they want to grab your attention and they all scream at you it's noisy you don't want that you want to have slow nice effects that are very subtle and only one which is prominent it doesn't have to be fast they all can be slow but one major and the other is very subtle you have to create contrast between them not conflict and that is principle number two don't try to put too much too many effects the same time all them being flashy make them subtle make them a little bit less and that will create that nice beautiful professional look now let's apply the theory into practices this is a live form creator tutorial so here we have the initial lan head with the nose and the eyes and this was the initial van head as you can see first of all here for the mask we have feathering and offset feathering what allows us is to move slightly inwards the mask with the fading effect and offset will literally move the mask inside or outside if it is in the minus portion the negative it will contract if it's on the plus it will expand now as you can see here it's very very conflict there are there's there's so much conflict here this neon light it's is way way too fast the loop count is where we can set the speed for each effect as you can see here this is much better this may also work but don't go overboard because it's distracting [Music] okay so we will activate our new mask our new surface as you can see here the count is at one this is why it's slow slow but it's fine even though it appears slow right now it will see in the greater scheme it's it's good so we want to deactivate the nose and here as you can see in the eyes they are way too flashy and it's too much contrast between this and this so i already talked about conflict but here it's also about being too much contrast and being hurtful to the eye and what we are going to do is activate a new surface with both the eyes as you can see here if you want to know how to create multiple shapes in one surface i will put the link down below it's in my previous tutorial and here i just posted on the effects a video from the asset browser the one that already came with platform creator it's here the podcast parks you can also see in the name and as you can see it's a slight slower effect and closer in tune with what we already have so that's it and now for the third principles we are going back to that underlying contract do not make your projections go to the margin of where the projector can go so for example here as you can see down we can clearly see the limit of the projector and that breaks the illusion that all this light is magic so stay out of the margins of the projection and always work inside by feathering and moving from the margins of your projector so going back to lifeform creator here we have the surface with a video it's a fractal video now how can we move back from those margins and how we can make them better if we go to the offset here we can contract the surface itself but here the key is feathering feathering allows us to have margins which are not clearly visible since there is no object here we don't want clear visible lines where this video is going to end we want it to disappear in the darkness and in my case here i'm going to activate labs because we need it and we are going to use an ellipse we will create a path that will focus on the ring itself so we're going to create it now as you can see here we are going to work with paths and here is the new path we need to find a know if you're going to use these buttons we're going to add or subtract and here as you can see this is the perfect example on how we can put this video inside the surface and once again the most important thing we are using feather so here i'm going to create multiple adjustments until i am happy with how it looks for me it's really important to see that circle because if we break the circle we once again break the illusion [Music] and we also i like also to create in the middle a mask [Music] and i want to create this mask in order to emphasize that bouncing light from the line set so how we can do this we will create a new ellipse we will lock the underlying layers in order not to move them by accident we'll position it [Music] and we are going to apply feather and of course in order to cut the other layers as i talked in the previous tutorial we are going to fill the surface with a solid black color in that way everything that is beneath it will be cut and in that in this area the projector will not project anything so in conclusion here is our end result they have powerful background but it's not extending to the limits of the projector it's nicely fading we have a low poly head line head with subtle effect not to overpower the background the line heads neon effect also is spot on and i've left some black margin for it to bounce and create a very nice halo effect so yes this is my tutorial for you if you like to see more please subscribe

Channel: Chris tries Mix Media

Views: 3,356

Rating: 4.8153844 out of 5

Keywords: lightform, LF2, projection mapping, tutorial, how to, design principles, Lightform Creator

Id: X6Q4_GZWexg

Length: 18min 7sec (1087 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 07 2021