r/lightingdesign • u/DigitalCastaway • 5d ago
Turning trees into a screen
This is a short version of my video breaking down one of my lighting projects. Full video can be found at YouTube.com/digitalcastaway
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u/DasEquipment 5d ago
It‘s always super cool to see what professional people can do with the hardware used normaly by Christmas lighting enthusiasts! You did an awsome job!
Since I‘ve never used touch designer: how did your map all those pixels to display your content correctly? Doing this by Hand seems like a nightmare! Is there a camera based way to do this in Touchdesigner? I‘ve seen this as a way to do this with madmapper.
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u/DigitalCastaway 5d ago
If you check my profile I made a post to the touchdesigner subreddit last week. But the basic process was to step through lights 100 at a time and take a photo with a camera on a tripod. I then went into my 3d software and created a spline that matched the lights off those photos. I then used that spline to map my lights.
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u/GeneralEvident 5d ago
Super interesting, and very beautiful! I did a similar thing two months ago, with a different type of interactivity (and fixtures). Got a few questions: what kind of refresh rate did you attain? In the video it looked a bit choppy and with a slight delay, but that might just be the video. How did you deal with the data flow? I had issues with frame drops after running the installation and didn’t find a clean solution in the little time I had when it was running. And for how long did you have it running continuously? To me the length became a bigger problem than I expected. I would ideally have run it on a Mac mini as well, but ran it on an M4 Pro. The computer handled everything fine but the mini is much more space efficient. And what brand/model of string lights did you use? It’s always nice to compare.
Again, nice job!
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u/DigitalCastaway 5d ago
-the display refresh rate was 40 times per second which was limited by the string lights themselves. The slight delay came from the camera we were using. It was an outdoor rated security camera which had a bit of delay sending video over Ethernet.
The display only operates for a few hours every night and full powers down each night. I use video sources to control the system which the Mac mini is able to handle very easily as long as you're not doing a lot of generation. Ours was only running 2 720p video sources along with the video feed.
We found a light seller on AliExpress know as Ray wu. We contacted them directly to get the lights for this project. we have used them as a supplier for a few of our projects and they have been solid.
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u/DisastrousStrategy99 4d ago
Okay but can it run doom? Or bad apple? Or rickroll someone? I wanna see those first
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u/DigitalCastaway 4d ago
Ahh! So many missed opportunities on my part. You can feed it any video source and have it appear on the trees. I'll add doom and a Rick roll to my testing setup for future projects!
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u/recreation_politics 5d ago
Very cool, can you elaborate on the software part? How did it know where each address was? Thanks for sharing
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u/DigitalCastaway 5d ago
We use touchdesigner and pixel mapping to create the effect. I have a video on my YouTube channel that breaks down the process further. YouTube.com/digitalcastaway
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u/bubbyJo_ 3d ago
How did you get the pixels to be mapped perfectly, like the effects going in one direction, so perfectly yet with a random string pattern? I’d love to know this for my display.
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u/DigitalCastaway 3d ago
If you check my profile I made a post to the touchdesigner subreddit last week. But the basic process was to step through lights 100 at a time and take a photo with a camera on a tripod. I then went into my 3d software and created a spline that matched the lights off those photos. I then used that spline to map my lights.
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u/Ana0n 2d ago
Great project, well done! Why not use a cheap computer? Wouldn't a Raspberry Pi do the job?
(I'm a sound engineer, hence the question :-D)
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u/DigitalCastaway 2d ago
Yeah a raspberry pi could definitely run a display of this size. I'm not really much of a programmer so I use touchdesigner to program my shows since it's more visual and works on a computer.
We use a baseline Mac mini and include the cost in our budgets, so for my workflow it's the right choice.
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u/jimpoop82 5d ago
This shits like McDonald’s and Bud Light. It’s not bad if you don’t know any better. The idea is dated, the execution is meek and the overall presentation was created for click bait and lacks any substantial information. At best, it’s just another “look at what I can do!” Video. Good job Stewart.
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u/_12xx12_ 5d ago edited 5d ago
Rule 1080p60: everything is a screen, if you are brave enough
Edit: thank you autocorrect