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Thread: Nice show, but...

  1. #11
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    Quote Originally Posted by Pangolin View Post
    Hey Absolom, thanks for the comments!

    At the present point in time, we're not selling it as a component. The reason is because when you expand the divergence, you can see the "structure" of the beam. If the beam doesn't start its life out looking perfect, then, well, there could be "questions"...

    For example, when Pieterjan posted a video of a show he did, some people complained about separation of the red. See this:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCETY3VbR2Y

    I mean, instead of saying "HEY MAN THAT'S AN AMAZING SHOW" they say "hey, what's that separation of the reds". They then falsely jump to a conclusion that it's because of Beam Brush... It isn't! In Pieterjan's case it's because his projector has a laser module made 5 years ago, not made specifically for Beam Brush, and was made in such a way to optimize size, space and cost at the expense of something that is completely invisible -- invisible that is unless you expand the beam!

    So selling it as a component to a variety of people, who would retrofit into their variety of projectors, and wind up having a variety of results, and would then make a variety of forum posts, well, I hope you see where all of this is headed. Basically Pangolin would look like idiots for developing such a bad system. Know what I mean?

    What would be better is to have 100% consistent and expected results, that are always beautiful. Then, instead of complaining about the problems, people will only look at the beauty. At least that's the plan ;-)

    To this end, we are partnering with Kvant who is making complete laser projectors, with laser diode arrays made in such a way that when the beam is expanded with Beam Brush, there aren't any objectionable artifacts. This kind of protects the brand, and at the same time makes it easy for people to get into one of these systems.

    We have sent individual prototype systems to individual people -- for example, Pieterjan, David Kumpula, (and soon Mike Dunn and Thomas Avisse), plus we have a handful of systems at Pangolin. But all of these systems were made with parts we actually acquired in 2013 and that sat on the shelf until recently. We had a limited number of parts to build a limited number of prototype systems. For production builds we ship scanners and a few other key components to Kvant, and they machine the rest and build it into their projectors.

    So -- bottom line, if you want one of these projectors, call Justin and he'll give you a price for a projector. There is a line of projectors ranging from 3 watts up to 30 watts (I think, something like that).

    By the way, we will also soon be releasing a build of BEYOND with Beam Brush and example content so people can play around with it on the preview window and get a feel for what it does and how it works, even without having such a projector.


    Bill

    Bill no good deed goes unpunished!

    All I can say is I saw it when you first did it a decade or more back and this is a different animal. An amazing animal. Thank you.

  2. #12
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    Quote Originally Posted by buffo View Post
    This is an excellent demo of the Beam Brush effect! Thanks for posting this, Bill.
    On Facebook, PJ posted his work perhaps 3 weeks ago, and Mike Dunn's more recently. I figured some people here on PL might not have seen them, so I'd re-post them here.


    Quote Originally Posted by buffo View Post
    I've seen some of the early work done by others, and PJ has also put together a few examples more recently that show what could be done with Beam Brush, but this abstract example by Mike is the one that really made me think, "Wow, this has a lot more potential than I thought it would."
    Yes indeed. So far you've only seen a few of these released, because some were submitted for ILDA Awards, and people were afraid to taint the judging if they released them too soon. Judges would know who did what work, and perhaps be biased. They figured -- better play it safe than be sorry (or have questions). I respect that...

    In any event, for sure you'll see others releasing what they've done as well. There are a wide variety of styles and things that can be done with Beam brush.


    Quote Originally Posted by buffo View Post
    Although thinking more about it, I just thought of one other use case where this would be super-helpful: Glow-in-the-dark projectors!

    Damn... This is going to be interesting to watch!
    Yes, we've got one in the hands of David Kumpula, although we're not sure how well 405nm is going to pass through. Testing will need to be done on that. But yes, it will be interesting to see how David uses it.

    When we were first approached by David, it was because he had an interest in doing work with it using our 3D platforms. I thought we'd be able to get Beam Brush integrated into those platforms quickly, but work on those platforms is going pretty slowly (but finally picking up speed now). But what you've seen Mike and Pieter do is based on automatic effects that we've built into BEYOND, and so it will be interesting to see how David uses those tools.


    Quote Originally Posted by norty303 View Post
    Does that mean this example content will work ok with EMULaser too?
    Yes indeed. In fact, that's kind of one of the first things we got to work. We used Emulaser as a preview window before we built Beam Brush into the other preview windows, including the cue preview window itself.



    Quote Originally Posted by kecked View Post
    All I can say is I saw it when you first did it a decade or more back and this is a different animal. An amazing animal. Thank you.
    Yes I guess you're referring to our fourth-generation device. I do believe (and people have told me) that we showed it at SELEM in the past. We made this video on YouTube 10 years ago:
    https://youtu.be/75s7uBlVJIU

    I didn't measure the actual divergence capability of that particular unit, but clearly what we have now is greater.

    Also, this video spends a lot of time showing how it could be used in beam shows, but just wait until you see the beam shows with the Beam Brush we have today.

    Today, our standard configuration (including what Pieter is using and what David has) allows up to 40 milliradians divergence, which creates more divergence than an equivalent -16 diopter SafetyScan lens.

    Late last year, Ryan made a Facebook video that was a kind of prank play on "Epstein didn't kill himself", where he pushed it to 60 milliradians. I think 40 is a pretty good number, but the design is completely flexible.


    Bill

  3. #13
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    Quote Originally Posted by norty303 View Post
    Does that mean this example content will work ok with EMULaser too?
    yes it will ......


    (noticed bill answered already before it was too late!
    There is more out now using beam brush!


    (just note some of the music is a bit inapropriate for all ages)
    Its a collaboration effort i did in 8 hours overnight originally for a livestream but it uses beambrush a lot.

    It's visual interpretation of sound.. kind of like a manual visualiser I guess!
    No director or artist in between just me and the artist herself.

    I intentionally chose the beam brush graphic at the start as a homage to the first thing I saw on beam brush!
    Last edited by masterpj; 07-10-2020 at 08:36.

  4. #14
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    WOW, kick ass Pieter!

    But by the way, what's that separation of the reds? <just kidding> ;-)

  5. #15
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    Laser made new again. This is verging on video toaster space.

  6. #16
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    Quote Originally Posted by Pangolin View Post
    WOW, kick ass Pieter!

    But by the way, what's that separation of the reds? <just kidding> ;-)
    I so wanna fix it with a new module but that's a matter of waiting and time. For now ill settle for it and be careful with my use of reds with this laser module
    I really think beam brush made this so much more organic and filling and this was just an 8 hour job. Working on much more in the background but just keeping quiet till im further in progress.

  7. #17
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    Wow, beam brush is amazing! So glad to see useful innovation still happening.

  8. #18
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    Quote Originally Posted by masterpj View Post
    I so wanna fix it with a new module but that's a matter of waiting and time.
    Yep, I know what you mean. For beam shows, the separation is almost invisible but for graphics, the trick is to just "hide it", by never doing anything that has red alone. I'm interested to see David Kumpula's assembly since he combines using dichroic rather than strictly edge combining as your module was made.

    Kvant is working on a new module now that is built with a different philosophy. I haven't asked if it is the same size as the 3W module in your projector.

    In any event, you're one of only a handful of people who has this innovation and so it's a matter of playing with the tools and getting used to really how to use it, while new laser developments are taking place. You'll be that far ahead of others, but of course we'll as that you share the knowledge you've gained as well.



    Bill

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    Quote Originally Posted by kecked View Post
    Laser made new again. This is verging on video toaster space.
    Wow - an Amiga reference! Now that's the sort of compliment I can get behind!

    Adam

  10. #20
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    Nice work, PJ!

    Quote Originally Posted by Pangolin View Post
    Yep, I know what you mean. For beam shows, the separation is almost invisible but for graphics, the trick is to just "hide it", by never doing anything that has red alone. I'm interested to see David Kumpula's assembly since he combines using dichroic rather than strictly edge combining as your module was made.
    I'm plugging away at it, I swear! I think I'm a week away from completing this two Saturn build. Things are obviously a bit messy at the current state.

    For those of you that I haven't told, this build is essentially half of this 4 Saturn single-mode build. So that's two decks, both with 405nm/405nm/450nm/450nm/520nm/520nm/638nm/650nm single mode diodes with Ed's (Ekeefe's) Scan-Thru Rotator on the bottom deck and BeamBrush on the top deck. As you can see from the pics in the first link, the case, optics plates, and most of the wiring and mounting of components are complete. As I said, I'm hoping I'm about a week from completion at the snail's pace I'm moving, perhaps a bit more.

    Assuming that everything works out as planned, I'm hoping this will have great overlap even when fully diverged, but it won't be as wide a divergence as you see in PJ's video. This is due to the initial beam size of the single modes being ~2mm by the time they make it to the galvos/BeamBrush which is smaller than PJ's and Pangolin's current multi-mode/knife-edged modules. I'm sure the new Kvant builds will be great, but in the mean time I am happy to film any BeamBrush show after I finish my projector if desired by PJ/Mike/Lyra/ and others with access to the BeamBrush updated version of Beyond.

    Keep up the great work, PJ!

    -David
    "Help, help, I'm being repressed!"

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