Grasshopper for projection mapping

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Permalink Reply by Armin Seltz on January 27, 2016 at 6:50am

Hi Phil.

Have a look at this thread:

http://www.grasshopper3d.com/forum/topics/projection-mapping-from-r...

I detail why I don't think its the best idea to use Grasshopper for something like this, at least not exclusively. You should look at vvvv - its geared for exactly those kinds of purposes and you will find many examples regarding projection mapping.

Its very similar to GH anyways and follows the same principles. Don't be put off by the minimalist interface, Its super powerful!

Permalink Reply by Phil on January 28, 2016 at 2:09pm

Alas, it's for a school project so I'm tied to grasshopper. The idea is to use a ditogear slider and dragonframe to spit out x-values that I'd put into grasshopper. Still a bit fuzzy on my overall idea, but think ill do something involving an anamorphic image moving through a structure....

Permalink Reply by Armin Seltz on January 29, 2016 at 4:09am

Right, ok. Well have a look at Firefly for sure. It has amongst many other cool things, support for the arduino. If you would be using an arduino to go from dragonframe to the slider (like here: http://ditogear.com/theatre/ditogear-dragonframe-arduino/), then you could get the arduino to spit out the values and get them into grasshopper automatically. Mind you, that would need quite a bit of experimentation and knowledge of arduino, which I don't have, but it certainly is within the realm of possibility.

If it is just for a school project, then maybe do something different and a bit simpler. Can I ask what kind of school class this is for (ie. where should the emphasis be)?

You know I had this idea, which would be nice to do, where you dont mount the projector on a slider, but you actually mount a small screen on the slider at right angle to the movement, then place the projector so its pointing at the screen. Now you have for example a 3D Model of something and get grasshopper to create a slice and display the outline of that slice.. then the screen moves for a few millimeters and it projects the next slice, etc etc. If you now take a long exposure shot with a camera, you will have a nice halo outline of a 3D Model. Its kind of like how a stereo lithography printer works. Anyways just and idea and something that would be possible using the equipment and Grasshopper. For that you wouldn't even really need the automatic transmission between dragonframe and grasshopper, you just start them together and for example the screen moves every 2 seconds, then you show the outline for like half a second, giving you enough room for it to still work if it is slightly out of sync.

Either way, firefly is probably going to help you a lot, because it has some nice components for animation kind of stuff. You can additionally use something like Anemone, to cycle through iterations.

Permalink Reply by Phil on January 29, 2016 at 7:52pm

I ended up changing some of my idea similar to what you said. I have 3d printed object mounted on the slider and have the projector stationary. Then I took the motion data from dragonframe and put it into an excel spread sheet. So now would be somehow creating a script that reads the excel data to move the 3D model to match the printer one on the slider...