I’ve just purchased Vuo Pro and am a complete beginner.
My name is Mario and I work with mobile digital planetariums using spherical mirror projection. I was very excited to learn from Paul Bourke (the creator of the projection mesh warp files) that Vuo now includes a node called ‘Warp Image with Projection Mesh’.
I wonder if anyone can please advise me on how I go about transferring a real-time drawing onto the dome using Warp Image with Projection Mesh? An artist has approached me with the proposal of transferring a hemispherical (‘fulldome’) drawing from his tablet onto the dome in real-time.
Currently the way I project 360° fulldome content onto the dome using my MacBook Pro is as follows:
See attached photo showing a warped fulldome image going from laptop to projector to small flat mirror to large spherical mirror to dome.
Some of the things I’m unsure of are the following:
how do I bring the artist’s real-time drawing into my MacBook? Do I need to attach his tablet or can the Vuo Fetch Image node pick up wireless input?
how do I feed the VuoCompositionLoader (Vuo Scene) to the projector?
Your guidance would be greatly appreciated, as I can see SO much potential for Vuo and spherical mirror projection working together.
Artists are forever approaching me with great ideas of real-time work they’d like projected on the dome - but the missing link has always been an application to accept real-time content and warp it in real-time for the spherical mirror.
I’m really hoping Vuo is the link to finally bring two creative industries together :)
Hi, Mario. I’m excited that you see potential in Vuo, and I’m sorry I didn’t get back to you sooner.
What kind of tablet is the artist using? If it’s an iPad, you could use AirPlay to stream the tablet’s image to a computer. The computer would need to run an AirPlay server, such as AirServer. Then you could take the output of the AirPlay server and stream it to Vuo using Syphon (use the Receive Image via Syphon node). The AirServer app supports outputting Syphon, so this should be relatively straightforward to set up.
If you aren’t able to use an app that outputs Syphon, another option would be to get the tablet to display on your computer inside a window, then use Vuo’s Capture Image of Screen node to capture that window (but that would be more finicky, since it requires the tablet display window to always be the exact same position/size).
In Vuo, you can feed images into Warp Image with Projection Mesh, and then feed the output of that into the Render Image to Window node. By default it shows up as a window, but you can either press ⌘F to make it fullscreen, or connect the Change Fullscreen Status node to automatically make it fullscreen when you run the composition.
This sounds like an interesting project. I hope this helps you figure it out. Let me know if you have further questions.
Oh, I forgot that iOS devices can stream video via a cable, too. (This only works for devices that have Lightning cables. For example, my iPhone 4S, which has a 30pin iPod-style cable, doesn’t support streaming video.)
It requires a minor change to Vuo’s video capture code — so Vuo 1.2 (coming in a few weeks) will support streaming video from iOS. Screenshot attached. Much more convenient than setting up WiFi + AirPlay + Syphon.
@smokris is iPhone capture available on 10.9? I can’t find any info regarding which OS this is supported on, and I can’t find my iPhone on 10.9. (looks like I have a good reason to upgrade now! :-D
