I’m looking to get my fiancé a projector as a gift and I’m really struggling to figure out which one is a good one for a beginner. He has no prior experience with video mapping but wants to get into it. I’m not looking to break the bank but I understand a good projector will come at a cost and I’m willing to spend a bit more if it’s worth it. Ideally looking for a projector that’s portable. Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated!!

Hey everyone, follow along in our new projection mapping tutorial here: TouchDesigner & MadMapper tutorial.

Christian shows you how to easily send real-time textures over Syphon/Spout into MadMapper so you can quickly projection map anything you want!

I'm new to projection mapping, what projector do y'all use? How much does ansi affect mapping. I see a lot of user projecting outdoors and getting bright vivid results.

For context I plan to Run some projection production at live events. I host shows for various local bands and though I'd be cool to implement mapping to the grill of guitar amps and such. Im in doors most of the time but there are times where I am running events outdoors

Everything in this subreddit impresses me. How can I get started . What's the most basic gear I can get?

What is video mapping? Technically. How it is possible that video projects on some surfaces and doesn't on others? Seems like magic.

A projector displays the game on the wall while a webcam watches that same wall. Whatever the kids stick up there, colored tape, paper shapes, sticky notes, instantly becomes part of the game. Marbles drop from the top and bounce, roll, and pile up on the real objects with 2D physics. Move a piece of tape and the marbles immediately start taking a new path.

A few technical details for anyone interested:

• The webcam runs on its own thread so rendering stays at 60 FPS.
• During setup, you click a few points on the tape so the software learns its HSV color under the actual projector lighting. This ended up being much more reliable than fixed thresholds or background subtraction, and removing tape does not leave behind ghost obstacles.
• Camera and projector are aligned using a homography. The projector displays a 3×3 calibration grid, you click the points in the camera image, and a least-squares fit maps camera space to projector space. The marbles end up colliding exactly where the real tape is.
• The detected shapes are warped into projector coordinates, triangulated with a pure-Python ear-clipping implementation, and fed into the physics engine. I originally used a native convex decomposition library, but it would randomly segfault after a few minutes with no error messages. Switching to pure Python completely eliminated those crashes.
• Physics is handled by pymunk/Chipmunk, rendering by pygame, and vision by OpenCV.

The whole thing runs on a normal laptop, webcam, and projector.

https://github.com/edison-vs-tesla/virtual-marble-run

Cheers!

And yes of course something will happen when it hits the corner. In v2.

🎃 For everyone just getting started with home projection mapping before Halloween — the mapping is the fun part, but if you're like I was, the wall you'll hit is content: what do I actually project, and where do I get it?

After years of building holiday shows, I got into projection mapping and needed to solve the content side for myself, so I built FacadeThemes.com — and now I take one photo of my house, upload it, type one sentence — "menacing clowns and zombies, high contrast neon" — and AI designs five complete themes for my exact facade. I included the "On Your Home" image previewed on my actual house.

The download is all standard files made for exactly what you're learning: transparent PNG props you place surface-by-surface, seamless video loops, architectural textures, and a production guide that tells you what goes on which part of the facade. It drops straight into whatever mapping software you use — HeavyM, MadMapper, Resolume, any of them.

You get one free use of the "On Your Home" tool at facadethemes.com — honestly the best way to figure out what your facade can do before you even start mapping. I also wrote a free DIY guide for building a weatherproof outdoor rig — parts list + build steps — at facadethemes.com/rig-build-guide if you're planning to run shows all season.

Happy to answer anything about projectors, mapping, or getting a first show running — this hobby's the most fun I've ever had with holiday decorating.

It achieves ±10μs clock sync across devices running purely deterministic audio DSP locally on the phone (app or browser). No network dependencies.

Side note: The core tech is actually a centimeter-accurate acoustic RTLS built for heavy industrial floors and warehouses. This crowd light show is a creative spin-off I’ve been playing around with recently.

Projection Mapping with 7K lumen Epson laser projector on Toyota Tundra by LED Orange Productions. Some cool line work overlayed with some generative concepts, mapped in the driveway at the house and used photoshop to clean up a small bleed on the step rails in post. Turned out really nice on camera and just as great in person

How to find such videos for projector mapping or these made by the guys. Like i wanna map such cool tyings but i am unable to find such vids etc. Please if anyone knows where to find help me with these.

[Self-Promo] and i am the creator Soo with just a phone , a wireless camera (IR Camera) and a projector , We can do crazy animations with live BodyTracking and segmentation . And did i mentioned it is running on a phone!!???? Okay tbh this feature requires quite heavy compute resource ( On newer iphone Pro models like 15,16,17 or an m1 + ipad pro or leatest android Phones with 16GB Ram ) , But still!!!! on a phone!!! and in real-time . And also available on macOS and Windows(Coming Soon)

Soo Surfabeam is a mobile projection mapping app available for both Android and iOS.

For Android : https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.secundumreality.surfabeam&pcampaignid=web_share

For iOS / MacOS: https://apps.apple.com/pk/app/surfabeam-projection-mapping/id6755757897

Website : https://www.surfabeam.com

#projectionmapping #surfabeam #videomapping #digitalmapping #3Dprojectionmapping
#digitalart

Hello dear community!

I've been taking advantage of Fable to help me build a tool that i've been missing for a long time at this point. I called it ComfyDesigner. I guess some of you might be familiar with the complete lack of true integration between GenAI tools and traditional projection software like Touchdesigner. I always found that it was a nightmare to use AI workflow with projection mapping software.

That's what motivated me to blend both ComfyUI and TouchDesigner together.

Here is a non-exhaustive list of features included, keep in mind it's still very much a WIP :

- Native cluster architecture : many times I'm a bit lacking of power to run what i want on my laptop or my laptop is far away from projectors or camera i use. That's why I built this project to be natively working as a cluster. My current testing setup includes a 5090 computer that i use as a server that does most of the heavy lifting, accessible remotely if needed, a raspberry pi 4 2gb that usually only handles webcam(s) and projector, and my laptop, on which most of the time i dont run the software on because all the devices are on the same LAN but might be useful in case of WAN to reduce latency on some parts of the workflow. This makes I think for a very flexible architecture.

- Everything is a plugin : the software has been built from the ground up to be suuuper easily extendable with plugins like you would with ComfyUI. Integrating new nodes should be super easy when a new feature is requested or a new model come out

- Browser first : Something that has been bothering me a lot with TouchDesigner is it's monolitycal architecture and restrictions on the hardware on which you can control it. I loved the ComfyUI approach that you can run remotely on your laptop or even on your phone

- OpenSource in the heart : I've been very disappointed with the way the community handled sharing around TouchDesigner and in a lesser way with ComfyUI. It is a shame that workflows and plugins are sometime paywalled limiting the actual sharing of knowledge and the growing of a community. This is why this software will be 100% open source with special licence for companies willing to not share their work. Hopefully it should avoid the community to be gutted with patreons while allowing people who need to keep their work private to be able to. The absolute goal as you understand is to keep it free for artist and to try to make a buck on companies or museum using it in events (if it happens at any time :p )

Now a little example to give you a little preview of the project :

The pictures you will find above are webui screenshots. The setup is my usual, Raspberry pi4, connected to a usb webcam and an hdmi projector, both looking in the same direction, the software running on my 5090 server, and I'm working from my laptop browser. In the workflow on the screenshots, I'm doing a structured light scan to calibrate the projection POV with the webcam one (Hello LightForm :p), then taking the produce map to warp the webcam image, allowing me to reproject on the object or wall im projecting on aligning textures and shapes together. I also get the webcam of my laptop through the web browser on which I apply a mask using mediapipe to segment myself from the selfie, i composite both images (the warped webcam and the laptop webcam filming myself) and do an OpenCV edge detection on the composite. I then inject that inside FluxRT that generates high quality interactive video at around 40 to 50fps with a latency around 1sec. This is a simple example but I want to extend it with MIDI control from instruments connected through the browser.

I WILL publish the project in a near future but i would like to iron a few bugs before!

It has been a few week that I'm very excited with this project and wanted to see a bit the feeling of the community around this project, do you find it interesting? what features would you want to see? do you see projects it could help you with? specific workflows?

This lengthy post obviously hasn't been written with AI :p

For the mods, as I'm not sure this would be considered as branding I did put the promotion flare on ;)

why do you need a media server instead of just building a computer?

Quick mid-beta update on FieldLux, the browser-based projection planning and handoff tool a few of you have been trying out.

Like I said last time, it stays free through August while I keep working on the beta. So please poke at it and tell me what breaks.

Here's what's new:

Rear projection + per-part materials
Assign different materials to individual layers of a model. A window, a scrim, and a wall no longer have to share one surface. Rear projection, scrim, blackout, and physical materials (clearcoat, IOR) are all in. Right-click a layer or open Object settings to edit.

Real luminance heatmap (cd/m²)
This is the one I most want eyes on. Alongside surface lux and pixel density, there's now a luminance mode showing actual perceived brightness on the surface. It factors in incidence angle, so an angled face reads dimmer like it should. Probe points show cd/m² directly, built on standard photometric math.

Surface primitives
Dome, cylinder, curved wall, flat surface, and basic room. Quick blocking before you bring in real geometry.

Circular projector arrays
Ring your projectors around a pivot with count, radius, and arc control. Live preview, then bake. Handy for domes and 360 setups.

It's still a beta, and the material and surface side has rough edges. I'd rather hear about them now than later.

Coming in August: lighting fixtures and a desktop app.

Try it (no install, runs in browser): https://field-lux.com
Discord (bugs, requests, or just lurk): https://discord.gg/6aurm9MREg

If you do real mapping work, I'd love your read on the luminance side especially. That's the part I most want to nail before this leaves beta.

I have worked in this industry for fifteen years and know what features are essential and which aren’t, I also have a Claude subscription.

If people don’t chill with the awful low effort subscription slop apps I’m going to start re-making a free alternative and having the bot post it in your comments section.

Does anyone know how this map was created in order to make it interactive like that? What program you’d use to create it and how to get it to automate? Just having a tough time trying to find the right phrase to research how to go about this. Thank you!

For anyone who does Projection Mapping for fun or commercially...

What would you say the most important features are in a Projection Mapping software?

projection Mapping my mini jeep