LabLab
"We were looking for an intuitive and easy-to-use solution and that is exactly what LightAct delivered."
Jonathan Richer
THÉORIZ Studio
LabLab, an artistic laboratory, chose LightAct as their projection mapping software. Located at Pôle PIXEL, the heart of the creative industries of the Lyon metropolitan area, the LabLab research team works on the creation of new audiovisual, immersive and interactive experiences.
The software they have developed, Augmenta, is a tracking technology focused on detecting people or objects without any prior placement of sensors or beacons on them.
By using small computers called nodes, they are able to connect to different types of sensors such as 3D cameras or LIDARs. These sensors then detect the location, orientation, velocity, acceleration, bounding box and the height of a person.
Ritual, one of the projects LightAct was chosen for, is an immersive interactive experience carried out in a studio originally designed by THÉORIZ. The studio’s interactive floor took up 8 x 6 meters. The overall resolution of the scene, which also included the studio’s walls, was 4058 x 4058 pixels.
LightAct’s first task was calibrating 8 WUXGA projectors. “If there were any minor imperfections, we were able to fix them very quickly with LightAct’s manual warp and blend tools.“ said Jonathan.
"The 3D calibration solution in LightAct delivered very quick and accurate results."
Jonathan Richer
THÉORIZ Studio
Ritual is using elements of interactive play, shows and adventure in the same narrative experience where the player casts a magic spell in a fantasy inspired immersive environment. Ritual is rendered in real-time using Unity game engine and the content is streamed to LightAct through Spout.
Besides Ritual, LabLab is also hosting dance performances which are enhanced with real-time interactive projections. For this part, Notch was chosen as a real-time engine.
LightAct’s ability to natively play Notch blocks and control all the exposed variables was crucial. When talking about this feature, Jonathan said: “The workflow was surprisingly intuitive and quick and the playback was extremely smooth.“
"The integration between Notch and LightAct was admirable."
Jonathan Richer
THÉORIZ Studio
TUIO and OSC data coming from Augmenta, which represented the scene size and the exact position of people immersed in the environment, were received by LightAct and then passed to the Notch block. Notch real-time render were then applied to the 3D model of the space inside LightAct and pushed out to the projectors.
"LightAct was able to receive TUIO and OSC data from Augmenta and pass it on to the Notch block."
Jonathan Richer
THÉORIZ Studio
LightAct’s workflow enabled LabLab team to create one OSC / TUIO connection and pass the data to different Notch blocks instead of creating one connection per block. This was extremely useful as the intent was to have several Augmenta Notch blocks in a single media server composition.
LightAct was able to bring the immersive environment to life in its viewport as well by visualizing both the scene and the content that interacted with the detected movement on the scene in real-time.
LabLab was also very happy with the support they received from LightAct’s staff: “All the questions we had were usually answered in less than an hour so we were able to rapidly iterate towards the solution.“
"We wouldn’t be able to achieve the results so quickly without LightAct’s incredibly responsive customer support."
Jonathan Richer
THÉORIZ Studio
LightAct Licenses
LightAct Creator License |
Equipment
Projector: | 8 x Epson EB1075 WUXGA projectors |
Tracking: | Augmenta |