New laser freak here.

[Dbunny]

Hello all.

I finally made it to this site after years of experimenting alone.
Yay.
I am a veteran multimedia artist and avid electronic musician with a history working in television, theater, and installation art.
I studied holography and painting in collage. I built my 1st laser in the 80's, a Mielles Griot 8mw with a custom controller/scanner with audio in. Lots of lumia and reflections.
As of late I have been working with Magic, Resolume , Synesthesia projecting sound modulated video and now modulaser / laseros with cube.

During COVID I started doing crude gorilla open field shows with the cube to the delight of many isolated folks. I literally live on a island in the Pacific N.W.
Now I have recently been tasked to do some "laser shows for the kids" maybe 4th of July, you get the picture....
I am feeling a little cart before the horse as I have just been messing around displaying premade content from laseros.
So after much studying I ordered quickshow and a 3 watt RGB with DT-40 scanners, Beyond was just beyond my reach.
I am excited about my new equipment but in retrospect not very confident about my quickshow purchase.
I thought quickshow would get me into a industry ecology and provide a solid platform to build on
In light of this I feel it was good choice but all the content looks very corny and the software somewhat limited. We will see soon enough.
So like a lot of newbies I am looking for some premade shows and more abstract content to get me rolling, which brought me to this site
I am also looking for other artists/show techs to talk to and share ideas and content.
I have always loved video and laser technology and I am excited to be combing all the wisdom on this site.
Thanks to all those who maintain this resource for less experienced folks like me.
On a final note, Does anyone know if the Neon Captain is going to produce more radiators?
That machine looks like the ticket for blending video and abstract laser images and I am sad I missed the boat.
Cheers!

[Bradfo69]

Welcome! Couple quick points.... You didn't make a bad choice. Even if you bought Beyond, you'd still have Quickshow. The software is free, it's the hardware that costs money. So whether you bought an FB3, FB4 or whatever (and a Beyond license), you'd still have Quickshow available to you free. So you haven't "wasted your money" getting Quickshow. You'd have it regardless. Quickshow is actually a very capable piece of software and there is an awful lot you can do with it. Beyond is kind of based on it in the first place - same layout, same included cues, controls in the same place... just an awful lot more built in under the hood - much of which a vast number of users will never take advantage of. There's just too much built into Beyond to satisfy the largest variety of artists. Here's your analogy... Quickshow is for example, what someone who paints with oils uses but, Beyond has tools for oils, charcoal, pencil drawings, lithographs, clay, photography and all the mediums some artists may use but others may never experiment with.

Laser graphics are, by their very nature, cartoonish. It's just the nature of the beast. There's only so much detail the physics of a laser projector will allow and, a certain fixed ceiling you'll eventually hit. It's a product of the scanners and, the number of "points" they can start, stop and move to in a fixed amount of time. The improvement of detail in a laser image is only accomplished by having multiple projectors output overlaid on each other and have each projector only draw a small portion of an image by utilizing a feature called distributed scanning. i.e - one projector draws the face, one projector draws the body, one projector draws the background... etc. all at the same time. It's not so much the software.

The Radiator is certainly still available for purchase and will be continued. Chris Short (swamidog on the forum) will happily sell you one if they're in stock.

There is quite a bit of fourth of July content out there created by a number of great artists you may be able to purchase. It may not be cheap - as good laser content takes an awful lot of physical time to create. There could literally be over a hundred hours of programming time put into designing a three minute song. So think in terms of paying someone's salary for two weeks. Yes, they can sell it to multiple people which makes the cost lower than that but, a few hundred bucks per song is not uncommon. Just know that going in. It's a living for these people. I suggest checking with people on here like Mike Dunn, Nisha Ramnath, Pieterjan in the Netherlands, etc.

It's also a big leap of faith but, I would be remiss if I didn't suggest giving consideration to coming to SELEM here on the east coast in August. It's the largest gathering of like minded laser people in the US and if you're into this at all, it's life changing. SELEM stands for South East Laser Enthusiast Meet but draws people from all over the country (and internationally). And yes, people from Portland and Washington State regularly attend. The event is in it's 14th year and one of the most intense learning experiences you'll ever have. You can see details in this same subforum. I discovered to this forum and registered for my first SELEM about the same number of weeks away as you are now and, its one of the most influential things I've ever done in my life. Others here will echo the same feelings.

[james]

Since you mentioned audio modulated video, you might want to check out the Vector Synthesis group on Facebook and scanlines.xyz. There are some very talented people there. Not all laser related but it might give you some good ideas and contacts for future tech art projects.

Also, if you can design an animation in a vector CAD application, you can export it as a directory full of numbered dxf files and open that whole thing in LaserBoy. Then use LaserBoy to optimize it and save it as an ilda frame set file. Lots of great stuff has been made this way. LaserBoy also has effects (functions) that can make animations from single frames, a selection of frames or to alter an entire frame set.

[polishedball]

The Radiator is certainly still available for purchase and will be continued. Chris Short (swamidog on the forum) will happily sell you one if they're in stock.

They are sold out and plans are not to do another run for some time due to increases in chip prices as I recall

[Dbunny]

They are sold out and plans are not to do another run for some time due to increases in chip prices as I recall

I was afraid I missed the boat.

I hope I can get on a waiting list.
Its wonderful that creative people from this site got together with a shared passion to produce such a wonderful device.
I haven't seen anything else like it on the market.
I am excited to enter this community. I thought I was alone in my passion for Lumia and optical invention.
Thank you for your reply.
D

[Dbunny]

Since you mentioned audio modulated video, you might want to check out the Vector Synthesis group on Facebook and scanlines.xyz. There are some very talented people there. Not all laser related but it might give you some good ideas and contacts for future tech art projects.

Also, if you can design an animation in a vector CAD application, you can export it as a directory full of numbered dxf files and open that whole thing in LaserBoy. Then use LaserBoy to optimize it and save it as an ilda frame set file. Lots of great stuff has been made this way. LaserBoy also has effects (functions) that can make animations from single frames, a selection of frames or to alter an entire frame set.

Excellent!
Thank you for sharing that information.
I will be looking into Vector Synthesis and laserboy today!
Best.
D

[polishedball]

I was afraid I missed the boat.

I hope I can get on a waiting list.
Its wonderful that creative people from this site got together with a shared passion to produce such a wonderful device.
I haven't seen anything else like it on the market.
I am excited to enter this community. I thought I was alone in my passion for Lumia and optical invention.
Thank you for your reply.
D

Check out https://modulaser.app/ if your looking for a software solution. I own this and it is great, but nothing like hardware with knobs to twiddle. Also if looking for the ultimate and true analog console, you can not beat the Z-5 for quality and build. http://aldebaran-systems.com/Z5Plus.htm

Also if you have not heard of SELEM and have the ability to travel to Newark Delaware, you could meet some great people and play with all these tools in Aug. https://www.photonlexicon.com/forums...Sign-up-Thread

[Dbunny]

Check out https://modulaser.app/ if your looking for a software solution. I own this and it is great, but nothing like hardware with knobs to twiddle. Also if looking for the ultimate and true analog console, you can not beat the Z-5 for quality and build. http://aldebaran-systems.com/Z5Plus.htm

Also if you have not heard of SELEM and have the ability to travel to Newark Delaware, you could meet some great people and play with all these tools in Aug. https://www.photonlexicon.com/forums...Sign-up-Thread

Thanx for your reply.
Aldebaran systems Z5 plus looks very cool.
I just set up modular laser and I am layering it with it's video output controlled by an APC 40 mk2.
Your right its pretty great.
Cheers!

[james]

If you are somewhat adventurous and you have a knack for math (or at least you know what the sin(t) function is and where it comes from) you might want to experiment with the latest development version of LB. It's not the one that's out there for the general public. It's still kind-of in beta testing. The current public version introduces a math rendering capability that I totally re-wrote since its release. It's called LaserBoy Liquid Math. It's a bit like Spirograph, but it's capable of fully animated frame sets.

You need the current public version and then get the latest dev version and copy the necessary parts from that into your LaserBoy installation.

https://laserboy.org/code

I really appreciate any feedback you might have.

[Dbunny]

Whoa that sounds great!
Really nice work.
Ill let you know as soon as I make any progress!
Still figuring out some basics.
Gratefully yours.

D