Lumia glass special cuboid shape

[TheHermit]

Hi, Greg

You've just reminded me of LII's great mylar 'burn wheel' effects, of which glassLaser could add to his repertoire.
It's simply melting a sheet of mylar with well controlled power of a laser beam, <2W depending upon the thickness of the mylar.
The effect is reflective, instead of scan through refraction or diffraction. As the mylar melts, the surrounding reflection becomes increasingly distorted, looking like a multicolored bubble, until it bursts like an explosion.
The bubble can be controlled and the explosion delayed by moving the beam, similar to a welding rod pushing a molten puddle. A motorized wheel can also be used, w/o deflecting the reflection away from a camera's FOV.
Couldn't find a previous video demo of the mylar burn, except for this 1 sec Laserium flash of it bubbling up, ready to explode. But here's a good discussion thread referencing it, as well as other lumia ideas.
Cheers!
Roj

[buffo]

This combined talk of sucking and background effects inspired me to finally try a crystal dimple, which when done right looks like ionized plasmas spewing out from or getting sucked in to a stellar nebula.

That's pretty cool, Greg! Can you clarify the optical path though? I see the "dimple" mounted in front of the bounce mirror, but where did you position the lumia wheel?

Adam

[TheHermit]

Originally Posted by glassLaser
Thank you very much for the information.
It seems that back then it was much more difficult to put on a laser show compared to now.

On the contrary. Laserium and disco controllers had physical knobs, buttons, and ....

In hindsight, I feel the need to correct and elaborate upon my previous answer, which should have been "Yes and no...".
What is a laser show?

Laser Images Inc's original Laserium shows were 1 hour long compilations of several recorded popular songs, with dancing/morphing laser effects projected onto planetarium domes. The pitch darkness of the domes allowed a 1W krypton laser to be sufficient, with neither fog nor visible beams. Stars projected onto the domes created the illusion of unforeseen intensely colorful entities dancing just above the audience's heads.
The 'laserist' manipulated waveforms in real time on a custom developed hardware synth controller, to augment and enhance the show's foundation of a pre-recorded backing data track. Some songs used different lumia, either scan through diffraction gratings or the beam was split with 1/2 redirected to pass through lumia wheels, as Greg's last pic illustrates.
Laserium coined the term 'cycloids', meaning 'visual music'. Cycloids are not 'invented', they are a natural phenomena of harmonic motion, uniquely experienced via laser abstracts. That's why they are so fascinating. Cycloids are discovered during rare moments of serendipity, like elusive lost chords. An experienced laser artist understands how to recreate and play them in time with music. IMO, cycloids are the true essence of laser art, inherent with all of the elements of music; tone (color), harmonic waveforms, rhythm, and emotional expression.
Ion gas lasers were very expensive; ~$15k for a 1W krypton or equivalent sized 5W argon. They required 30 amp 3 phase power + 30 gallons per minute water cooling @ 30 psi, which was prohibitively expensive and beyond the utility resources of average enthusiasts.
Apart from Laserium, small laser companies soon sprung up to produce public laser displays, corporate A/V conferences, and contracted to tour with famous rock bands; Pink Floyd, The Who (Holoco Ltd), Yes, Jean Michael Jarre...
Some sold argon disco laser projectors, with custom hardware controllers that had 3-4 quadrature waveform generators, hardwired to scanning heads. But, without the benefit of a data track, preset buttons were used to instantly recall images & beam effects, but those button bashing laser light shows were primarily off-the-cuff beam displays (illegally scanning audiences) only used for a few climatic songs to get couples onto the dance floor, with the exception of special 'closing #s' w/o the beat, that left the audiences in awe.

Corporate A/V productions exploiting logos and animated wireframes, became the laser industry's bread, butter during the mid '80s. Computerized 3d graphics software replaced hardware generated synthesized waveforms.
ILDA specs standardized kpps based frame rates & 5 different file formats for animation sequences of line drawings, plotted within 3D graphics software .
Instead of tape recorded data channels, proprietary DAW timelines were added for precision timing of image frames, in parallel with audio tracks.
Initially, multichannel sound cards were used to convert XYZRGB graphical data into analog signals. Op amps were added to provide sufficient levels to drive projector hardware. Then imaging software migrated from sound cards to proprietary, 3rd party ILD DACs, such as Helios, Etherdream, FB3, ...
Inexpensive, 13 amp, single phase, air cooled, RGB diode laser projectors were game changers. Laser shows inevitably evolved into hundreds of truss hung beamer projectors along side moving LED flood lighting and large screen video, mostly used as special effects to enhance stage productions, such as concerts and ultimate multimedia productions with pyrotechnics, like defqon raves.
Today's laser effects are usually preprogrammed within laser software and often queued as 'gobos' from either the LD's lighting desk or DJ's console via DMX, without needing a laserist.
Laser safety and equipment regulations have become prohibitive throughout Western countries, but not so much in Eastern Europe nor Asia. Only projectors with approved variance documentation for safety features are legally sold in the USA. Laser operators must be certified laser safety officers to ensure compliance with safety regulations. Training is provided by reputable laser projector distributors.
DIY need not apply to show their gear in public.
Nevertheless, a few 'old school' abstract laserists are still creating the art of visual music. Some within the community have developed their own abstract laser controllers and ILD file players.
The Swamidog of numerous abstract ILDA awards has collaborated with synth developer/EE, Andrew Kilpatrick to develop the popular Radiator, which very effectively combines physical hardware controls with modern midi, ILDA, & HDMI technologies, specifically developed to create abstract projected 'cycloids', similar to those of Laserium's era, as well as beam shows.
Although far less sophisticated, my T4 Laser Synth is also designed to create and play 'visual music'.
While being more technically challenged than others on this forum, I've chosen a different path of exploiting the Arduino IDE compatible, T4 Teensy MCU development board's Audio Library to develop a custom MIDI controlled laser synth, combined with MIDI control surfaces, & Reaper's DAW out of necessity. Where there's the will, there's a way.
For over 1/2 a century, big corps, like Sony, Yamaha, etc have poured billions of $ into developing musical synths, MIDI devices, and DAWs under the guidance of professional musicians. I'm finding that their products offer more mature musical production features compared to the relatively narrow niche of ILDA centric laser gear. The production of visual music requires the same features as audio gear.
So far, my uniquely unorthodox approach is producing impressive abstract results, beyond my original imagination.
Different strokes for different folks. A few pics of my gear are in my profile's picture album, if interested.
Reckon this long winded answer pretty well covers the evolution from way back when to now, from my personal POV, allowing for a 30 year hiatus between pre-1988 European shows & my recent 2018 revival. I have little personal knowledge of what was happening in the US during that period. Obviously lots.
Perhaps Buffo, Brian, or others would like to add to this account or fill in the blanks
Hope this info provides you with some useful food for thought while choosing your own path forward, glassLaser.
BR
Roj

[swamidog]

it seems reasonable to post this weird lumia generator i made here. i call it a laser eggbeater and it uses many of the lumia techniques discussed here and some other tricks.

[swamidog]

Very reasonable indeed, Chris.
Best lumia video I've seen; perfect choice of slow guitar, capturing the intricate interference patterns of the lumia. The slower, the better & w/o stepping. 🤗

Do you happen to have any mylar burn videos to contribute?
BR
Roj

i do not have any mylar burn videos. never actually seen one in person, but i'll do some experimenting and see what happens.

[Greg]

I haven't unpacked my gear or thought about lasers following February's show but this thread inspired me to.

I put up a video that shows the optical path including the dimple and the wheel. It's not quite the effect I remember from the 1980s. There was a veil like jellyfish shape that had waves of lumia flowing to or from the center with a 3D look.

The video shows Roj's suggestion of scanning an expanding square of dots through the dimple, which was made simply by heating the plastic over an electric element and pushing into a small jar with pliers.

Then, in the video, I tried a bit of narration over a simple test of the potentiometer noise in a CYGN-B symmetry control.

video here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0VgIpvA0tw

I found a big roll of good burn mylar some years ago at work. They said it came from home depot, and to take as much as I wanted, so I took a couple of meters. No idea what it's intended purpose is. Here's a poor quality video of this mylar burning using a Lasershowgen timeline. I should remake this using the original long side pod fader.

poor quality video of burn effect:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnY7YhpaEWc

[glassLaser]

I am also creating this ionised gas effect with some of my czech glass crystals, that will squeeze and elongate the laser lines in unpredictable ways. It is also filled with water( less than full ) :
https://youtube.com/shorts/woxw8bkjLSU?feature=share

[TheHermit]

I put up a video that shows the optical path including the dimple and the wheel. It's not quite the effect I remember from the 1980s. There was a veil like jellyfish shape that had waves of lumia flowing to or from the center with a 3D look.

That's what I expected to see with the slowly expanding/contracting circle. 🤔

The video shows Roj's suggestion of scanning an expanding square of dots through the dimple, which was made simply by heating the plastic over an electric element and pushing into a small jar with pliers.

Slight misunderstanding. I meant a circular array of dots, more like your digital circle, but with fewer dots, also slowly expanding and contracting around the center of the dimple.
Thanks for explaining how the dimple was created.

I found a big roll of good burn mylar some years ago at work. They said it came from home depot, and to take as much as I wanted, so I took a couple of meters. No idea what it's intended purpose is. Here's a poor quality video of this mylar burning using a Lasershowgen timeline. I should remake this using the original long side pod fader.

Hmm... not like Laserium's burn.
How thick is the mylar and how much power are you hitting it with?
Looks like there is some melting reflections of interference happening. Is that a small flickering scanned image, instead of a static beam? Perhaps that's the difference; causing multiple burns on top of each other, instead of a single clean one
Is the dim scattered lumia looking effect, that's surrounding the central beam's reflection, multiple explosions, created after the beam has burned through the mylar?
Mylar burns are quite challenging to control. Perhaps you missed my now deleted suggestion for Chris to use double sided tape to attach a circular mylar cut out onto the existing lumia wheel, large enough to overhang around the edge to avoid heatsinking. The static beam's point of incidence should be the over hanging area of the mylar. The wheel keeps the mylar moving to avoid prematurely 'blowing up' the burn's bubble. The mylar needs to be as clean and flat as possible for the reflection to remain center screen.
With the wheel turning as slowly as possible, without stepping, very slowly apply more intensity to the static beam, which is reflecting off the mylar's surface onto a projection screen.
As you approach the melting point, the reflection should start getting larger, appearing like a rolling multicolored bubble, before exploding.
Hope these instructions make sense and help you to achieve a great looking burn.
I have vague memories of Laserium using a burn during a transition of Jimi's "The Gods Made Love", with it bubbling up on the initial thunder sounds, then exploding towards the end noises.
Rots-a-ruck!.
Roj

[TheHermit]

I am also creating this ionised gas effect with some of my czech glass crystals, that will squeeze and elongate the laser lines in unpredictable ways. It is also filled with water( less than full ) :

Lots of interesting random lumia going on all at once. Looks like you're scanning an image, perhaps with audio modulation. With lumia, sometimes less is more.
Perhaps you could gain more predictable control by applying a smaller, simpler, slower moving image and observing what happens while moving it around the crystal.
It's a great exercise to learn how the light reacts with different surfaces, even without the temptation to synchronize with music, until the lumia is under control.
Just a few suggestions for whatever they're worth. Personally, I prefer immersing myself inside clean, flowing, cloud-like intricate interference patterns, while mixing colors, like enjoying a sunset to the sound of a progressive modular synth's drone. 🤗
Keep up the good work! It's very addictive, but I've never heard of anyone over dosing... only over spending on more gear.
😎

[glassLaser]

Lots of interesting random lumia going on all at once. Looks like you're scanning an image, perhaps with audio modulation. With lumia, sometimes less is more.
Perhaps you could gain more predictable control by applying a smaller, simpler, slower moving image and observing what happens while moving it around the crystal.
It's a great exercise to learn how the light reacts with different surfaces, even without the temptation to synchronize with music, until the lumia is under control.
Just a few suggestions for whatever they're worth. Personally, I prefer immersing myself inside clean, flowing, cloud-like intricate interference patterns, while mixing colors, like enjoying a sunset to the sound of a progressive modular synth's drone. 🤗
Keep up the good work! It's very addictive, but I've never heard of anyone over dosing... only over spending on more gear.
😎

Indeed, it is a laser show, quite rich also. I will try with more basic repetative patterns. Thank you.
This one crystal is very good for lumia effects, I think.
It is also quite interesting how the colors are mixed. It is a DPSS laser projector with full analog modulation, i think a very good color gamut and it is represented very artisticly through the crystal structure.