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.

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. Use the short-key command+\ to have the full-screen view.
  5. 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.
  6. 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.)

  7. Finally, play your exported video full screen on the second screen (videoprojector) using a video player like QuickTime Player or VLC.

 

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