#wonderdome

[why-i-love-comics]

Wonder Woman's Wonderdome info page

[everythingsucksbutthatsokay]

Unpopular opinion but Wonder Woman's invisible jet is cool and should come back. Like yeah it's silly, but so are superheroes in general

[everythingsucksbutthatsokay]

The main problem with Wonder Woman as a character and a property is that there's no consistent idea of who and what she is. Different writers take her in totally different directions based on what they think she should be. There is no formula for a Wonder Woman story the same way there is for a Batman story, because she's never been one thing long enough for a formula to solidify. She needs a more cohesive and consistent setting, supporting cast, and rogues gallery. Also bring back the WonderDome, let her have a base of operations. Give her some consistency

[girlontheclouds]

i am about to lose my shit why have they characterized the wonderdome into a man thats in love with diana. stop with trying to force diana into a relationship. “oh im so lonely and i yearn for the touch of a man” SHUT UP

[godstaff]

A little place of her own...

Among the discarded few good ideas DC had in the last decades, there was the Wonderdome, secret lair for Wonder Woman.

Same as Batso has his crappy, chiroptera-infested Batcave, filled with Bruce’s own bat-shit (his gadgets and vehicles) and covered by actual bat-shit, and Supes has his futuristic, literally out of this World Fortress of Solitude, Diana did, once upon a time, have a place to call her own: The Wonderdome.

A place to retreat after saving the World, to have her most precious possessions, to shelter her feelings, plan strategies, train...to kick back and relax, etc.

It was of very weird origin: alien. A Lansinarian Morphing Disk, shapeshifting sentient creature which served as invisible plane and other several uses, besides being a round palace.

(DC Wikia) 

But ended sacrificing itself to save others. Unlike men, women can’t keep real state for too long.

It was a total mess, thank you Rucka, which I think was the reason of its disappearance, but it was, in essence, a good idea to let Diana have her lair, like the other two members of the Trinity. Kind of made her more of an equal.

But it seems only men can own “caves”.

Without resorting to the alien origin, which is, pretty much, Superman’s domain, Wondy could still have her place. It could be a gift from the gods, or, better yet, she could’ve won it in battle against an evil deity, a token of her victory, thus keeping it into the mythological realm, with the palace having its own conscience, and keeping Diana on her toes, trying to avoid some leftover booby-traps until she tames the place for good. Inside you could find some beasts and creatures from myth and secret portals to other realms, which Wonder Woman doesn’t know how to open, but she’s eager to discover (eventually she will convince the “Dome” to open its secrets to her, of course).

 The name “Wonderdome” is very appropriate, so I would keep it.

It is a pity Diana doesn’t have her lair. It could be of great potential for storytelling. Needless to say, it could be way more interesting than the current adventures of Wonder Woman in rebirth.

[adamlvachon]

Calculating appropriate Pan and Tilt DMX values for a moving light positioned at the peak of a Dome, controlled by custom software

Lighting performers in a Dome with 360° projections is a unique challenge. In many regards it is similar to theatre in the round; in order light a performer properly, Light has to hit the performer from all sides. At the same time, the angle of the light has to be steep/controlled enough to avoid hitting the surrounding projection surface. 

So, what does that mean? Well let's take a look at our current test moving light, the Vizi Wash LED 108 from American DJ. According to the manual, the instrument has a Pan of range 540° or 630° (you can choose with the internal program settings of the instrument, I am sticking to 540° for now), and a Tilt range of 265°. For testing purposes, I have placed the light at the peak of the Dome.

Thinking about a performer moving around inside the Dome, and the need to keep might lights from washing out projections, I know that both 265° of Tilt and 540° of Pan include ranges I simply do not want or need. The question then becomes, How do I determine what degree range I actually need for the space I need to light? The answer: some simple math!

Let's start with the Pan. In this particular instance, there is no need for more than 360° of panning for my moving light (circles are nice like that). So, it turns out we need 360 of the full 540°, two-thirds, or roughly the first 66% of 540°. So that means we also only need 66% of the 0-255 DMX values for the moving light, which is about DMX values 0-168.

The Tilt is a little trickier, but still some simple mathematics. The first question to answer is "What range of angles of light do I need?". In my case, I knew I needed only 90° of Tilt for the WonderDome. As you can see in the drawing below, the Dome is essentially a hemispherical projection surface on 7' risers; In order to not wash out the projections, i need to stay below the 7' mark. The diameter line of the Dome is at the same 7' mark.

Some basic geometry tells us that taking a measurement angle at the peak of the Dome to the radius points on either side of the dome is 90°. Great! We know we need 90° of the 265° of tilt available to us, which translate to about 34%, or approximately 87 DMX values. But how do we calculate which 34% of the 0-255 DMX values do we need? Well, there are a few ways, but here is what I did: 

We know 90° of 265° are accounted for, so 265-90 = 175°. Since the 90° I need are directly in the middle of the total possible 265°, I know I can simply divide 175° in half to get 87.5°. Using the same method as before, this means that the first 87.5° has DMX values 0-84, and therefore our 90°  is DMX values 85-171 of the moving light.

And there you have it! So how do we apply this? Let's say you are working in TouchDesigner with a system similar to the one I set up in this post. For my TouchOSC rotary dials, I would simply assign the Pan output value rage as 0-168 and the Tilt output value as 85-171. When the moving light profile reads the incoming OSC (Open Sound Control) data, it is already restricted to the values needed.

[adamlvachon]

Lighting profiles, DMX, and TouchDesigner

Over the past couple of months I've had the opportunity to play around with TouchDesigner and test out it's capabilities in regards to programming moving lights. In this post I'll cover how to make a profile for  a simple moving light in TouchDesigner, how to output the profile data to DMX to communicate with the instrument, and how to control the light using a simple TouchOSC control set up.

One of my favorite things about TouchDesigner is that is that not only is it incredibly customizable, but the programming logic is fairly intuitive as long as you are willing to play around and not be afraid of making mistakes.

The ease of making a moving light profile in TouchDesigner was actually incredibly straight forward and easy. To start, I looked at the DMX chart for the moving light I was using, in this case an American DJ Vizi Wash LED 108

The light actually utilizes 12 DMX channel, despite the chart above having only 11 channels listed. With this in mind, I began by creating a simple network of 12 Select and Null CHOPs (one CHOP for each DMX channel that the moving light needs), one Merge CHOP, and one DMX Chop. The result looked a bit like this:

A quick note on TouchDesigner and DMX. On their wiki, Derivative says the DMX Out CHOP addresses in the following fashion:

"The first channel you send into the DMX Out will correspond to the first DMX address (DMX channel) As you add channels to the DMX Out, you will access the next DMX channels in order. For example, if you input 12 channels into the DMX out, you will be controlling DMX channels 1 thru 12." 

With this in mind, I decided a Merge CHOP was necessary to collect all of my DMX channels in the correct order for output before connecting to the DMX Out CHOP. This worked well for testing, however it might end up complicating things in the future, which I will come back to in a little bit.

DMX Out sends data through a USB to DMX adapter like the ENTTEC USB Pro that I used. When the drivers are installed properly, the adapter should show up as a Device in the parameter window for the DMX Out CHOP as long as you are set to FTDI Serial for your interface.

From here I needed some data to see if the profile would take data from an outside source, so I created a simple TouchOSC app to control intensity, color, pan and tilt.

This is where the DMX values from the ADJ Vizi Wash manual come in handy. For example, the manual I know that the moving light pans when it receives data between 0-255 in it's first DMX channel, so I made sure to have the rotary dial for Pan output values 0-255. I did this for all of the parameters I needed to control with this simple controller. For convenience, I also labeled all of my sliders and rotary controls in TouchOSC, so that their names would automatically popup up as a channel later in TouchDesigner. More information about TouchOSC can be found here. 

Jumping back into TouchDesigner, I needed to catch all the TouchOSC data from my controller to send to my DMX channels so created an OSC In CHOP, and set it up to receive data from my iPhone. Be sure that you are Sending from your controller (phone, tablet, etc) on the same Port as you Receive in TouchDesigner on the OSC In CHOP! I created an OSC In DAT as well, which allowed me to also look at the data streaming in from my phone.

From here it was a simple matter of connecting CHOPS, and using the Select CHOPS to grab the right channels. I organized my profile vertically, and, making sure to connect the Selects and Nulls to the Merge CHOP from top to bottom, or DMX 1-12. 

For this particular profile, the only channels I really needed data for were Channels 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 (See chart above). One quick note regarding the Shutter function of most moving lights: It needs to be told to be Open. In this case, Channel 8 needed to have a constant value of 255, which I added as a Constant CHOP before the Null CHOP.

The rest of the DMX channels (2, 4, 10-12) were unimportant, but still needed values in order to be seen as "channels" by the Merge and DMX OUT Chops, so I added Constant CHOPS with 0 values before their Nulls as well.

The result as a very quick and responsive iPhone powered control system for a moving light. An addition I made later with the help of Matthew Ragan was a custom Kinect Tracker CHOP, which allowed us to get some rough data values (from a Kinect camera that was tracking a performer in real time) to connect to the Pan and Tilt Channels. That particular network and tracking solution needs some work, but the light reacted well to having realtime tracking input!

Regarding DMX assignments and TouchDesigner, a feature which almost all commercial, dedicated lighting control software/hardwares have is the ability to quickly and easily to Patch (assign/reassign) instruments to whatever DMX channel is the most logical for the design of the show. For example, as a designer I might patch a system of Front Light as DMX channels 1-20, skip 10 channels and proceed to assign my Back Light system as 31-40. In this fashion I can easily organize my channels to suit my needs. TouchDesigner can currently ONLY assign DMX in sequential order.

All that said, this may or may not be a problem, since I will be building the entire control system from the ground up, using fewer instruments (around 10), and TouchDesigner is super customizable. I might even be able to program a control to do exactly what I am talking about. It is definitely something to keep in mind for the future.

[adamlvachon]

TouchDesigner evaluation for WonderDome

The following rubric allows for 25 points, based on my needs of the WonderDome

Ease of 3D environment manipulation and navigation

1: worst thing ever, controls are complete poo

2: controls are annoying/frustrating, but I can get by if need be

3: Controls are a bit clunky, but definitely useable

4: Pretty easy to use, even if there are a few quirks I dislike

5: Dang, I could do this all day

Can you build in this program?

  4: The controls will take some getting use to, but over all they are fairly simple and intuitive. In terms of modeling with cameras and light, it is incredibly customizable, if a bit overly so. You can build and edit within Touch, or import from any CAD program.

  Instrument control

Neigh impossible, I can’t do what I need to do

This really isn’t meant to do what I need, but I can get by

Moderate programming challenges, and controls might be a little  clunky but it works

Moderate to easy programming, almost complete control/control of lights isn’t super frustrating or slow

I have complete control, and it’s easy to program

  3.5: Complete control over the programming, to the point where I’d essentially have to write moving light profiles from the ground up for my instruments, as well build my own instrument models (possibly? I might be able to just download the CAD versions form manufacturer websites and “animate” them accordingly). That said, given the flexibility of Touch designer, I can definitely program whatever parameters I need to.

UPDATE: After working in TouchDesigner for a while, I can confidently say that making Profiles for moving lights is super easy! There is a learning curve to learning TouchDesigner, for sure, and I have a very long way to go to be able to make my own control program on this platform, but it is certainly possible

Communication w/other programs

Does not communicate

Does not communicate across all desired protocols

Communicates, but is a royal pain to setup/communication drops out

Communicates  with other programs well, no real issues

Communicates perfectly and has all sorts of nifty auto features that make it all a cinch

  4: input/outputs in DMX, MIDI, OSC, etc. I do not know how well the communication flow works. Given how customizable TD is, the communication will probably take a bit of forethought, but will be very doable

UPDATE: The communication between TD and other programs, or even other computers also running TD (same or different editions) often requires a little playing around to make it work properly, but works quite well

  Cost

Not even a free trial version unless you have a super special dongle

Expensive, but there is a limited used trial version (trial version may or may not be useful)

Decent price point, trial versions for testing

Cheap and/or almost unlimited access trial version

Free or free version that will work wonders for this project

  3: I should be able to accomplish everything I need to in the free FTE/non commercial environment. The one exception to this is that TouchDesigner 088 non-commercial and TouchDesigner 077 Free Thinking Environment only allow for 32 DMX channels of output. This is a problem. Most of the lighting fixtures I will be using have at least 10 channels of DMX needed to be able to control them. In short, I will quickly run out of DMX channels for my lights. The commercial, professional and educational environments unlock the full 512 range for DMX, but do have a licensing fee. Educational license: $300 Commercial license: $599 Pro license: $2,200. 

Overall programming:

1: building everything from the ground up, and it’s going to be onerous and difficult

2: Have to build everything (or almost everything), but once it should be really stable and fairly straight forward once I get a hang of the programming

5: profiles are already made, I don’t have to do jack, AND there is an easy out for a “control” desk

  3: I do have to build everything from the ground up, but it is fairly easy, I'm getting some training from a professional, and it should all be pretty solid when the whole thing is done. Getting it all done before March, however, that will be the true challenge.

Total for now: 17.5/25 (70%)

   Conclusion:

TouchDesigner is incredibly powerful and flexible, but I’ll be building from the ground up, more or less. I’ll have to design and build a profile for every single light, and some sort of control desk/playback system to be able to program and run the show. Of the moving lights I’m looking at right now, some have as many as 47 channels of DMX to be used to operate them, which means I would have to program each DMX input/output individually in TD. That said, there will only be two or three different lighting fixtures and one lighting control system, and then I can just copy and paste the rest and re-patch as necessary. As mentioned previously, the limitation of 32 DMX channels in the non-commercial versions would severely limit the amount/type of lighting fixtures I could use, so I will eventually have to upgrade to a commercial or educational license for this project

So, TD would take a long time to program, but thanks to the fairly simple/logical interface, with a solid design plan and a little training to learn the program, TD is a viable option. A much more viable option if, say, I have more time (a full year?) or more time to dedicate to creating the interfaces, but an option none the less.

As of right now, TouchDesigner will be used for a large chunk, if not all of the programming for Lighting in the Wonder Dome project