It took awhile to get a system down, but once that was established it went pretty well. We have 2 DL-1s hung in our FOH that are normally driven by a catalyst. Our set (same as the Battle of the Bands Encore) has 5 towers of scaffolding with big gaps between them, so rather than make a blended image across the set we decided to use two separate sources with 2 separate masks for each side.
Honestly, I came up with an approach that worked for me, but is certainly not the easiest or most fool proof way. I used a few sources to come up with ideas on how to do this. The Resolume Blog seemed the most useful for me. Here is the awesome video on a quick way to do a basic mask.
Essentially in the video these steps are taken:
1. "Set Piece" is built
2. The projector is set in its location (Must not move, or the mask with have to be re-done)
3. Using a computer with dual outputs, set your outputs to be the same (you can also use a VGA DA if you have only 1 output)
4. Next it says to use Photoshop in full screen mode to trace out the set. I did this a different way, see next section
5. Import mask into your playback controller and test it
I tried this way and found that, at the resolution I was using, I could not see the cursor in Photoshop. I changed the type of cursor, messed with it for quite awhile, and finally decided to go a different route. Paint.net (FREE PROGRAM!) is essentially a mix of Photoshop and MS paint. I am not a media designing genius, so Paint.net made it much easier for me to navigate and use.
The first to steps should be pretty self explanatory. On the third step, setting up the dual outputs, you need to set both outputs up to the resolution of the projector. Next, open up Paint.net. You need to start a new drawing at about 20% smaller than your resolution. So for my 1024 x 760, I used 960 X 700. This is done so there are no areas to scroll to. It is very important that you keep your mask stationary while building it. Next I used the fill tool and turned the entire surface black. Following that you need to view your drawing as actual pixels (View> Actual Size), then set your view to Full Screen mode, and then create a 2nd layer and name it mask. Make sure your tool set is set so that white is your primary color (in the color box at the bottom right hand corner). Now you can close some of the windows to help building the mask easier. I closed history, layer, and color. You can always bring them back from the window tab.
Now the fun part! Use the correct tool to cover your set piece. I used the line tool set to a width of 8 to cover the scaffolding legs.
Once you have covered your entire set save the file. I created multiple masks. One had the scaffolding, another had the truss too, and one had the truss only. That way I can vary between songs. I saved all of these files as a Jpeg and loaded them into the Catalyst. I put the mask on the 3rd layer and used the Inverted Mask color setting. It made the white invisible and the black stayed. On layers 1 and 2 I put media.
Once I loaded the mask into my media server, I had to make tweaks. Essentially some of the scaling and positioning was a little off. I cut and pasted one tower and made the necessary adjustments. This did, however, take about 6 tries to get it pseudo-close. Below are a few pictures of what we did with the mask. It is pretty awesome being able to make the scaffolding look like a structure of video. We were able to make some looks that evoked thoughts of Tron. Much fun was had!
Check out this cool blog discussing Architectual Projection too.
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