simple automated animation show: RIYA vs KAM tri260

[pointless]

Hi there,
new here and to the world of lasers: Dav from Glasgow,
usually dealing with video projections, general sound-midi type projects and all round creative tech recently enlisted to help with one of those "art projects" involving laser animation... it wasn´t long until i stumbled on PhotonLexicon.
I´ve been spending the last couple of day digging posts on the forum and i think i´m starting to get the general jist of things, so i´m adventuring into my first post, please be gentle.

the brief:
required: a bicoloured (red and green) animation projected on a small wall (about 4m wide) displaying a "conversation" between red and green words/short sentences as if they were lines from a dialogue from a subtitled movie.
the conversation can be very basic and the shape of the letters can be of low quality (no high speed servos required here) but the timing of each word/line of text is critical to keep a good flow for the piece.
ideally, the system will be automated so that any gallery invigilator can turn the system and have it running automatically.

the budget: very small (in comparison to the systems recommended by the forum users), timescale are short (1 month from now for finished system), and the artist is wanting to be able to program the text himself, so solutions with easy learning curve are required.

I´ve been looking at ILDA lasershow controllers and laser units that can operate from a SD card regarding the automation requirements, as well as ILDA programming software with a decent timeline function and i´m currently looking at 2 systems that i´d like some informed opinions from you guys on if you´ve got time:

option 1> KAM tri260:
> RGY animation laser with SD card interface
>Colour: Red 140mW @ 650nm
>Green 120mW @ 532nm
Shock horror... how such a low budget piece of **** could even get a mention in this reputable forum? i´ve searched many a thread and no mention of the thing... does anyone have any experience of it?
it would be very suited to my needs as it combines the projector and show player in one unit and has 2 colours.
possible issues:
>low quality and reliability: i´m ready to live with these as the unit price would fit the target budget
>unknown manufacturer support: what can i expect from Kam?
>limited showfile size: the unit´s manual stipulates that there is a maximum 260 files to be contained on a 3Gb card. this should amount to around 250 (words/sentences) graphics files and a couple of ILDA showfiles? this might just be enough to start with, unless i´ve got the wrong end of the stick. Kam recommends their own laser software that looks dreadful but i´m hoping to be able to use something else (more on this later).

Option 2:RIYA multibus basic controller and separate RGY ILDA projector
these controllers look great and Ihor seems to be on the case with support, what would be a reliable yet affordable RGY projector to match this unit that i could get hold of, preferably in the uk? (recommendations please)

as for the programming of these units, all i really need is easy text generation (bigger range of fonts is better) and an accurate timeline that would let me sequence hundreds of graphics with easily adjustable timing.
Spaghetti looks great to me (will work with RIYA and hopefully with KAM), any other suggestions?

thanks in advance

david

[Doc]

I have seen the 160 version (same red but 30mW green). The green on the 160mW version completely obliterates the red, so the red will be useless in this unit.

For the money that thing is listed for you could build your own 'proper' laser projector from quality parts with actual warranty backup and suppliers that answer the phone and offer as much help as you need.

Contact Stanwax on this forum, he will advise you honestly about the best, most cost effective way of going about it.

Ian

[buffo]

I second Doc's suggestion: Get in touch with Rob (Stanwax).

Since you're in Scotland, you're a bit far by car from his location, but even so, a road trip would prove most helpful (and educational). Rob is an absolutely awesome guy, and you can take that to the bank. He will give you honest advice, and if you decide to have him build you a projector, I promise you will be exceedingly pleased with his work.

Adam

[hobbybob]

If the show is always the same you could also use a Pangolin FB3.
There is an xD card in there were you can store files also and make it start automatically.
I thought you needed to place the animation you wanted into the first slot via the software, after that you don't need a pc anymore to play back animations.
All you need is like a Blackberry adaptor to power it (5 volt on a USB connector) and when you turn it on it starts playing automatically without the need of a laptop.

[pointless]

thanks for your replies,

@ian:
i haven't seen the Kam in action so thanks for pointing out the discrepancy in power between the 2 colours- however, as the text piece is still to be devised, this issue could be tricked out by using small red word and big green ones? as i said before, it's for a small-ish wall piece so the projector need not to be super bright.

@ian and adam:
thanks for the contact suggestion, i'll get in touch with Rob, i'm in the liverpool area once in a while but probably not in the next month.

@hobbibob:
thanks for the FB3 link,
had missed out this one and at £500 including quickshow software, it's actually not as expensive as i thought, but still quite a bit more than some of the other SD readers i've been looking at. would be a good investment for the future.

So, it's now looking that i'm on track for my SD reader solution,
still investigating these:
showtacle ILDA player (490 euro)
SDPlayerBack.png

ILDA player from NRG (ebay)
uk seller with 100% feedback


i'm also yet to source a decent off-the-shelf ILDA RGY unit that competes with the Kam solution (250mW combined),
any pointers?


many thanks for bearing with my newbie requests,

dav

[norty303]

One thing I will add about any projector you look at - although you say 'simple text and short words' that is actually a reasonable challenging task for a set of scanners (in my experience anyway). I've found that 15-20k scanners struggle to write words of any length without significant flicker, so you may wish to try what you are planning on any prospective projector first, to avoid dissappointment.

[drlava]

You should definitely keep the RIYA and LDS on your list. The riya player will automatically play from the SD card on startup, and LDS (Laser Design Studio) enables you to create sophisticated time-line art including text with 20 built-in laser optimized fonts which will work fine with 20k scanners, and the ability to load true type fonts as well. If you wanted to do more in the future, this combo allows you to do much more as well.

[norty303]

laser optimized fonts

Do you know of any fonts that are particularly well optimized for laser use generally?

[drlava]

There really isn't such thing as a laser optimized truetype font, here's why.
True type converted fonts are defined as outlines, whereas laser optimized fonts generally are centerline-traced fonts although they can be outlines as well. A centerline traced font will scan about twice as fast as a converted outline truetype font. This is why the laser optimized fonts are built-in.

[pointless]

Hi everyone,

just a quick update on the assignement:
after some research based on the advice received on this thread, here's my current leading option:
new RGY500= 350mW red 650nm + 150mW green 532nm with ILDA port and 20K scanners
+ Quickshow including FB3 with SD card
+flightcase
uk seller with good feedback, 12 month warranty
£1000ish

got a feeling we're getting there.

thanks everyone for their help and other helpful offers to date.


dav

[pointless]

update:

after some more research, looks like Quickshow+FB3 is a useless combination for my purposes as it won't let me save an ILDA show to it's XD card.

go figure why they're selling it with the in-built card in the first place.

oh well, looks like it's back on RIYA+ spaghetti as first choice...
is there nobody in the uk that will sell a decent RGY projector+SD card player+ ILDA software bundled at for around £1000?

at least, knowledge is free,
one step at a time.

david

[pointless]

D'oh!
Spaghetti don't do text.

shall i add trace it to the equation or keep it simple with LDS?

mmh.

[norty303]

after some more research, looks like Quickshow+FB3 is a useless combination for my purposes as it won't let me save an ILDA show to it's XD card.

go figure why they're selling it with the in-built card in the first place.

You're perhaps not getting all of the info, or at least interpreting it right

Yes it will, just not from Quickshow (yet ) In fact QS doesn't use ILDA as its native format anyway.

If you have a whole ILDA show as a single cue you can upload it through LiveQuick and play it back. In fact, even if you have it as separate ILDA frames you can upload them and play them sequentially using LiveQuick. You still get LQ with the FB3 QS bundle I believe.

Additionally, I believe that the forthcoming (very soon, I'm sure of it....) version 2 of QS also supports uploading of cues to the FB3 card for playback. Just might be a little wait....

http://www.pangolin.com/forums/showthread.php?t=788

[pointless]

quote:"If you have a whole ILDA show as a single cue"
-would any other ILDA capable software work or does it need to be a Pangolin product? (starting to doubt there).

quote:"if you have it as separate ILDA frames you can upload them and play them sequentially using LiveQuick"
i need my frames (text) to fit a tight timeline (like lines of a dialogue), so approximate playback of frames wouldn't work in my case as it would be a nightmare to edit.

been looking for FB3+LA studio non bundled with Quickshow... doesn't look very common.


thanks for the clarification and forum link thought.
(can't wait for new product to be released i'm afraid)

[pointless]

Anarchy + Spaghetti
(thanks HN)

??

any other ilda software i should look at?

[norty303]

been looking for FB3+LA studio non bundled with Quickshow... doesn't look very common

To clarify - when you buy an FB3, you get the software free essentially. In the old days that was the 'LA Freak' package which comprised Showrider, LiveQuick, Draw3D, TraceIT, etc

Then they released Quickshow, which you also get for free. So if you buy QS and FB3 you 'also' get all of the legacy softare.

There are no options on software bundle, because it's free anyway. You buy the hardware and they give you the software. The only software you pay extra for is LivePro.

I seem to remember that you can chain individual cues into a single cue in LQ (but may be thinking of QS - perhaps...) so you could get precise timings that way. Either way, if you have the patience, you could take individual animations and add to a single cue, and upload that to FB3 for your 'show'. You could get very precise timings indeed using the animation frame rate.

There are some FB3 shows that are quite complex on the ftp site that exist as single cues if you want proof that it can be done.

[allthatwhichis]

Find a UKLEM; attend, then make your determination on what you need and what will best fit those needs.

[pointless]

Hi Norty,
thanks for the extra advice. that is useful.

i refer you to my brief at the top of this thread:
"required: a bicoloured (red and green) animation projected on a small wall (about 4m wide) displaying a "conversation" between red and green words/short sentences as if they were lines from a dialogue from a subtitled movie."

to achieve this effect, timing is absolutely paramount and i can't imagine a time effective way to create this other than to use a timeline editor which has an audio track with a graphic representation of a waveform so that the graphics can be visually locked to the peaks of a recorded voice sound file.

i'm sure it *can* be achieved with a lot of time spent tweaking timing values in a box editor but it doesn't seem such an appealing option.
I know my need aren't so typical to the usual 'show', maybe that's why i need to look at the other products out there. (the fact that i know nothing about lasers doesn't help either)

but, from what you're saying i could look at these options:

TraceIT>Spaghetti>Livequick>FB3 £575
Anarchy>Spaghetti>RIYA £240


Shame, i was getting pretty excited about QS

[norty303]

Not sure why you need to go the TraceIt-->Spaghetti route - you can create text easily enough in LQ. Just open a cue for editing, type the text, position it, copy the required number of frames for duration, add next bit of text, rinse, repeat...

[pointless]

Not sure why you need to go the TraceIt-->Spaghetti route - you can create text easily enough in LQ. Just open a cue for editing, type the text, position it, copy the required number of frames for duration, add next bit of text, rinse, repeat...

have you ever tried to edit a movie subtitle or pre-synchronise a laser display to a music track?

if you just approximate the number of frames needed with made up values it will take ages to be tight whereas it will be much simpler with a visual representation (video track, soundtrack waveform) of the media you're trying to follow- if you're working in a GUI environment.
maybe there's another way to easily solve this problem but i don't think guessing the number of frames would work for me.

in fact, this is the way the KAM software mentionned in the original post works, which prompted me to look for a better solution.

does anyone know of any other software with text edit, export to ILDA and timeline with waveform representation not already mentioned?

cheers,

dav

[norty303]

I think what you're going to butt up against is the budget. There are solutions out there, but not necessarily at your price point.

If it were me, I would also be spending some time checking out the laser - as I mentioned previously, I'm still not entirely convinced the scanners are going to be up to projecting the text when using true type fonts, and thats before you get into finding suitable software.

Given that you are projecting this, does it have to be a laser?

Moving to a regular projector and projecting outlined text will give similar results at short range, but you'll have a world of more appropriate software available to you.

i don't think guessing the number of frames would work for me.

I wasn't suggesting guessing - if you know the duration of each scene, and you know how long a LQ frame lasts for (or can be made to last for) you can work out how long it needs to be quite accurately. Ok, so not drag and drop from a GUI, but do-able nonetheless.

[Lasermad]

WOW , a fellow Glasweigian hanging about on PL , how did i miss you

I will PM my number , Im sure we can come up with something if we bang our heads together , i have FB3/Quickshow here and plenty lasers for you to experiment try and play with and check suitability before you splash any cash if thats helpful.

PAUL

[allthatwhichis]

WOW , a fellow Glasweigian hanging about on PL , how did i miss you

...
PAUL

Regional location not filled out...

[pointless]

@norty:
-yes it has to be a laser (client has specified)
-no it doesn't need to be TT fonts. they could be simplified vector graphics (with Anarchy or streamline) based on TT so they can have less points and presumably scan faster. and hopefully be legible (even if not perfect) with scanners of 20-40k. or maybe i'll find a software that gives me fast laser fonts.
-drag and drop vs. #frames: we're going in circles here. maybe i'll have to take your suggestion but i hope not.
-budget: RIYA+LDS= £310, less for the Spaghetti option- giving me over £700 to find a projector... i hope i'm not totally dreaming. we're talking fairly small projection here.

@lasermad:
alright? yes, would be good to know what kit you have (anything similar to what i've specced above) to eventually test out before buying.

@allthatwhichis:
Sorry about my lack of etiquette,
How big are you allowed to make your signature on this forum?

[drlava]

if you have any questions about the last option you specify, send me a PM. You are correct Spaghetti does not do text but LDS does.