Here's my dilemma. It's for a movie shooting at Hard Rock Hotel and Casino. They want to use DL2s to project onto the entryway wall under the porte cochere, where all the taxis and limos drive up to drop off hot chicks. The original idea (attached) was to hang them under the porte cochere far enough back to hit the wall nicely and use collage generator. The problem that came up was the cinematographer loves the architecture of the porte cochere's ceiling and does not want to see the DL2s hanging right in the middle. If they were brighter, I'd put them further back, but that's 72 feet, way to far for these units. Also, they don't want them on the ground because of all the extras and cars that will be passing by. They don't want anyone walking in front of the beams, which would especially look strange in collage mode. So the thought came up to hang them off the side of the porte cochere (attached). While this does solve all these problems, I am concerned about the keystoning of the fixtures in order to use collage generator. Base on the drawing I attached, can any of you tell me if this is going to be a problem?
I don't think this will be a huge issue. Keystoning is handled quite well by Collage mode. What I think you'll end up tweaking the most is your X skew (it'll be the 'X Ratio' channel on the global layer of each fixture). You may need to move the DL.2's that are doing the outside edges of the collage further back to fill the height of your projection surface as it has the shortest throw distance. If lumens become an issue, you could always use some brighter projectors with Axon servers (they can do a collage as well).
I think you'll be fine. For my last DL2 rig, the fixutres were off axis almost this far and I ended up shooting about 80' to my main projection surface (but I had complete control over all extraneous lighting). The DL2's kept up like a champ. The keystoning feature worked extremely well and were unable to tell how far off axis it was.
Also don't forget that in addition to the keystone correction (Drew is correct - don't for get to use your X+Y Keystone ratios in this case) there is the curved surface support to deal with the corners. You can shift the "center" of the corner all the way down to one end of the image to help correct, or deal with those column corners.
However using both collage and curved surface will eat up both of your effects on the global layer, but you still have 2 FX per graphic layer + visual modes.
Note that curved surface happens on an INDIVIDUAL fixture level REGARDLESS of if you are using a collage so you can adjust the portions of the image separately.
Also, don't forget to hook all the fixtures up together on a network so you can make use of the Sync functions to keep all the clocks consistent within the collage;)
Wow, thank you guys for the help. I'm feeling better now.
Marty, I do remember about using the sync function, but just so I don't miss anything, can you explain the sync function again and I'll take any tips you can give too.
I just noticed the New Idea graphic only shows four DL2s. It should be six. I just felt that not being in front, as originally planned, I should add a couple of more.
[quote=barnes2000]Marty, I do remember about using the sync function, but just so I don't miss anything, can you explain the sync function again and I'll take any tips you can give too.
Sure thing.
Sync basically allows you to have all the units playback a media loop together by assigning one single fixture as the master clock. So that when this "master" fixture hits the inframe of the loop it forces all the others to do the same at the same time.
In order for this to work you need to have the fixtures connected via Ethernet, with each fixture assigned a unique network ID ##. I highly recommend using Gigabit-Ethernet switch (1000 Mbs) and not a Fast-Ethernet (100 Mbs) or slower to maintain data speed.
To make one fixture "listen" to the other you set the Sync value in a graphic layer. The value you set is the fixture ID (1-255) that you want that fixture to respond to. You can set multiple fixures to respond to a single source.
You can further change the type of Sync with Sync Mode, but this can ONLY be done in graphic layer #1
Looks like you're getting some great info here. One other thing. I would suggest mocking things up in a 3D CAD program to see what level of keystoning you will need.
The DL.2 has a huge range on keystoning, but when doing Collage you'll find that which ever side has the narrowest image will require you to keystone everything to that size in order to have a consistent image.
In the drawing you showed with everything off to one side. The edge of the image that will hit the surface first will be the narrowest. All the other fixtures then have to keystone down to match that narrow side if you want everything to appear as it if was perfectly projected on there. All that will ultimately affect the size of the resulting image.
Thanks again to everyone. Scott, are you saying I should start with all DL2s zoomed out and then start the keystoning with the closest fixture? This would work, right?
You want to ideally leave yourself a range to increase/decrease your zoom on the units as needed. That way you can first adjust your zoom before you start keystoning and use the tightest zoom possible...which equates to a brighter image.
Most likely for this application the units that are close to the surface will need to be zoomed out a lot more than the units that are shooting farther away. If you use Zoom as your first adjustment before keystoning it means you will throw less pixels away as part of the keystone correction.
