Generally, there is a lot of projection mapping software such as heavyM and Madmapper which are designer-friendly. But in the practice, I realize they are not the most suitable. For instance, if the work needs only a suitable angle to show a short film, but for 4 days, and 7 hours per day, I can’t leave my laptop there for such a simple case for such a long time. Although MadMapper offers a solution named MiniMad which is a media box can supply MadMapper’s file, can help with the case, I don’t think it is valuable.
Let’s go to the point. After Effect can bring both simple and high-quality results in such cases.
In this tutorial, I used Adobe After Effect CC 2017 and a mini HD Media Box and a BenQ TH682ST Projector.
- Check the output of the media box and projector. Make sure the Media Box has the same resolution as the projector. In this case, my projector is Full HD 1920* 1080, so I have tried setting my media box to 1080i 50Hz, 1080i 60Hz, 1080p 50Hz , and finally, I used 1080p 60Hz, only because it works on the projector.
- Since I know my projector can run a 1920*1080 video, in After Effect, I create a 1920*1080 component to put everything I wanna show in the projection mapping inside.
- Last but most importantly, in After Effect, use Viewer-New Viewer to create a new window of the preview and drag it to the projector’s screen.
- Use the short-key command+\ to have the full-screen view.
- Now, it is ready to make the projection mapping. On the Viewer of the laptop’s screen, I only use the effect “Distort – Corner Pin” to adjust every element in the right position.
- After animating, EXPORT the animation by clicking Composition>Add to Render Queue. (A good video format that can easily be played back at good quality whilst being a small size (faster to play) is QuickTime with the H264 codec.)
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Finally, play your exported video full screen on the second screen (videoprojector) using a video player like QuickTime Player or VLC.
