LaserCam: A brand new live webcam to laser projection application

[dzodzo]

1) you can use virtual webcam software like Manycam or similar to stream other inputs (pictures, movies, parts of desktop) into LaserCam
2) i guess it should try to render the objects with intensity relating to their distance from camera, e.g more distant objects would appear more dim but that's just what i think, while using the software i didn't notice any intensity difference
3) i was of the lucky ones that got the software so i can't tell but there were reports of unhappy customers, unfortunately drlava is a busy man, so he might forget to reply or process, i imagine him as an absent minded professor

[polishedball]

The pro version I use will do a defined screen area capture.

Not to be negative, but if in a hurry it depends on when you catch drlava, as obviously this isn't his main source of income and has a pretty busy life.

It will work perfect for what ya need though. How much do you need ilda for just that short 6 sec clip?



John

1) I have black and white bitmap (BMP) frames rendered with Blender that I want to convert to ILDA animation.
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x15...-0184_creation
Looks like the algorithms used in this software are fully capable of converting my frames to vector ILDA frames.
But you say it only uses camera as a source and not video files like AVI or other and suggest to record our monitor instead.

Can you at least add support for converting series of BMP files to ILDA? BMP is an extremely simple file format, even I've written tools which manipulates them, and I'm just a hobbyist programmer.

Pointing a camera on a monitor just seems like a bad idea with the extra shading from the monitor cover, color bleeding, noise and other artifacts you'll get with a camera.

I failed to find any other software which will allow me to do what I want. If your program would support this, I'd gladly purchase it.

2) In the features list it says "Intensity shading (Pro version)" - What's "intensity shading"?

3) I've read in the forum that some people haven't gotten the software after making the payment. Is that still true? Or has it been resolved?

[dzodzo]

have you used that program (ManyCam) for this? Will the free version work?

Anyway, you mean that's a pro-only feature? Or do you mean you can only tell for the Pro version because you have it?
If someone has the Lite version, can you tell if it can do this too? I know it's like 50$ difference, but for me even that much matters because our import taxes (for a projector I'll get soon) are horribly high.

I use only the free version of Manycam with this and it works, however i didn't find much use for it (yet), just did some experimenting.

[polishedball]

What is the current version of lasercam pro?

[Galvonaut]

What is the current version of lasercam pro?

Version 1.2.2 I think, based on my recentish purchase from DrLava

[mixedgas]

Look at post 18 of this thread.

Steve

[Galvonaut]

Hi Dream.

I've not played much with lasercam, although do have it here and have had a little mess about.

I have not experienced problems with resolution as such, maybe be because LaserCam seems to create points based on contrast of the video, which doesn't really require high resolution capture.

When you click the <Viewer> button under the <control> section you get the control window. Click the little arrow on the right hand edge of the window to expand. Click <Select Cam> and this gives the option of using an installed camera or desktop area.

The issue you have with 'edgy' shapes may be to do with the contrast of the shape. If you have a video of a shape which also has lots of other detail and you adjust your detail settings to reduce the curvature of corners (the higher detail, the pointier your corners will be) it may pick up loads of unwanted detail. Maybe try editing the video in software which can increase contrast of the shape wanted while removing contrast of unwanted detail, even changing colours if this helps, then increase the detail level to get best results. I don't really think that LaserCam was designed to record things like cubes as they can be created within software. It is more of a tool to edge-detect people or things that are difficult to create by conventional laser software means.

Swamidog has done some amazing stuff with LaserCam and he may be able to give you some more tips and tricks, or maybe search the forum for some of his posts.

At the end of the day LaserCam, like LSX is a tool which needs to be learnt. I think all highly creative software can be difficult to get used to using, especially something that accepts inputs that can vary so drastically. Make the input as clean as possible and I think you will reduce the problems you are having.

Have fun

Keith

[mixedgas]

Quote:
"3) The program seems very good at tracing "real" webcam videos. But I'm opening an image of a simple black and white cube, and I see a cube with curvy edges and lots of points on the LaserCam preview. A cube only needs 4 points, I expected more from the tracing engine. I do remember showing some of my stuff to other people and being told that LaserCam wouldn't have a problem tracing them. But it seems to add some "curviness" to everything right now and also *a lot* of unnecessary points and not optimize much (like a perfectly straight horizontal line ending up with dozens of points in the middle of the line.
"
End Quote.

Galvos require lots of points. Some of them are added to compensate for galvo physics. Evaluating Lasercam without attaching a projector is a mistake.

Steve

[mixedgas]

quote:

"Galvos require lots of points. Some of them are added to compensate for galvo physics.
I think I understand what you mean. Sure, if it was a "large" cube, 4 points wouldn't be enough. But I kept and kept scaling it down with not much difference. If what you said was the only reason LaserCam used so many points for a small cube, then why does changing the "Detail" level under the "Control" menu change the number of points? If that amount of points was necessary, shouldn't the number have stayed the same instead of dropping by few hundreds for the exact same (sized) cube?"

WELL, There are many types of points, blanking, guide, corner, anchor and normal points are some of the industry terms used. Galvos have inertia and different response to small and large angle jumps. Dr Lava's software is tuned to produce these additional points as needed. For example, corner points are added at sharp corners to keep the galvo from overshooting as it rounds the corner of a image. Guide points are added when the galvo needs to make a long jump. In the old days these were added by hand, these days its done in software.

I've used Lasercam with 3rd party software that simulates a webcam to windows by playing back a stored video. It can be done.

Steve

Steve

[swamidog]

have you opened the scanner control window and adjusted the scanning optimization settings?

Okay, so Drlava just sent me the activation code for LSX and LaserCam Pro today. Thanks Drlava.

I don't want to be rude, but my first impressions with it aren't very good.
The user interface is very straightforward, but there are some things which frustrate me:

1) First reason is probably my fault. From what I heard from few people in this one month period, the pro version would allow me to trace a video file, not live from desktop or webcam. I can't find any option for that. I read the feature list of LaserCam and I thought it would do that, but english being my 3rd language, I might have misunderstood it: "NEW! Desktop Screen/Video Capture from youtube and images (Pro)". I might have misunderstood this part...
Some have said you can just play a video on screen and have LaserCam only convert that part of the screen, but in that case you have a low resolution video which will give worse results. Even if you capture the whole screen, you're limited to your screen's resolution, which wouldn't be the case if you used a video file as source.
And you also have to make sure the video will play in realtime with no slowdowns, if you have a video with little or no compression to avoid compression artifacts which will make the tracer do a worse job, this is a problem (ever played a "Raw AVI" video?).

2) I see no way to choose the screen area to capture. I click on the "Rec" button and I get a popup window, "Please select the record frame rate" and a "LaserCam Live Video" window. That's it. A small top-left corner square area of the desktop is captured.
BTW, if I close the "LaserCam Live Video" window, the preview window becomes extremely unresponsive.

3) The program seems very good at tracing "real" webcam videos. But I'm opening an image of a simple black and white cube, and I see a cube with curvy edges and lots of points on the LaserCam preview. A cube only needs 4 points, I expected more from the tracing engine. I do remember showing some of my stuff to other people and being told that LaserCam wouldn't have a problem tracing them. But it seems to add some "curviness" to everything right now and also *a lot* of unnecessary points and not optimize much (like a perfectly straight horizontal line ending up with dozens of points in the middle of the line.

Now please don't take this post as rudeness. Yes, I am disappointed with some things right now, but I don't blame anyone for that. And I'm *not* implying Drlava is a bad programmer, I only judge his tracing algorithms by comparing it with things I've seen in the raster to svg converter world, maybe the methods of generating svgs can't be applied to ilda. I'm not a programmer.

The point of this post is,
1) Find out if this program indeed doesn't support generating ildas from images or videos, not screen capture/webcam.
2) Find out what I'm doing wrong in point 2 and how to fix it
3) Find out why the tracing seems to be so bad with "edgy" shapes and if there's a way to optimize that with the program's options (I tried playing around with the optimization sliders with no success).