TWSP Projection Mapping

Directed by: IAMSTATIC / TWSP Co.
Technical Director /Programming: Markus Heckmann
Producer/Creative Director: Sherry Kennedy
Crew: Dave Greene, Ron Gervais, Andres Kirejew, Randy Knott

Back in February of 2013 Township & Co. hosted our one year anniversary / opening party and wanted to present an interactive element to our environment. We approached Markus Heckmann of Toronto’s Derivative to lend a hand in seeing our ideas come to light. Derivative’s software ‘TouchDesigner’ is used primarily for live music/stage visuals, projection mapping and artist installations. We wanted to take our logo- mark, the ship, and build a 3D version that we could project animations, generative (real-time) content and video clips onto.
Animation Director Dave Greene used 3ds Max to model the logo, exported it as an OBJ file that we then brought into a program called Pepakura Designer. This application makes paper craft models from 3-dimensional data. This broke our 3D ship model down to a flattened state that we printed onto sixty or so 8.5” x 11” sheets of paper.

We lined up the printed sheets onto foam core and cut out our 3D shapes. We taped the final shapes together, attached all 3 models to the wall and were ready to start mapping some visuals.

The visuals consisted of a few of our spots as well as animations and some newly produced generative work. In TouchDesigner we mapped our points to the model choosing which tessellation should show what content

Using an iPad/iPhone app called TouchOSC we set up a simple interface that could change our visual selection in real time over a wireless network. With 17 still images and textures, 39 videos and a collection of generative colors and patterns we mapped out the various ways we’d like the visuals to be presented. For instance, one row would give us consistent content over the entire model, another row would map different content over each of the three models and the third row would split each of the three sections of the model into three equal parts. The last row was strictly random meaning if we didn’t touch the buttons for three minutes the randomizer would kick in automatically.

This small-scale project was a great learning experience in projection mapping for us and we look forward to trying something bigger (buildings!), as well as miniature, in the future. The logo visuals were a huge hit at the party, helped add to the environment, and allowed us to explore a new and interesting way of sharing our work!