Moving Head light tracking
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Hey everyone, I'm quite new to this software so this might not be possible but do you think it would work to create automated followspots using moving heads and either eyes++ or TouchOSC's accelerometer? If its a completely black space except for a single actor? Not sure how multiple moving heads would be callibrated...
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I'm sure it's possible, and there are probably several ways of doing it, 'cause that's one of the beauties of Isadora.
Since it's a single actor you're tracking on stage I might use a Kinect to do that. The Kinect works well with Isadora. Then you just need to translate the position info from the Kinect to a DMX signal to control the position of the moving light. There are several USB to DMX devices that work well with Isadora.
Of course it won't be as simple as I'm suggesting: you'll need to do a lot of calibrating to make sure the lights follow the performer at the same speed etc etc. but Isadora does have all the tools to make this happen. And we have a supportive community here to answer the many questions you'll have :-) -
@alfiek Obviously I'm not going to suggest you buy a multi thousand dollar BlackTrax system to do this, but you might find it helpful to look at the kind of problems BlackTrax solves and how they make it happen, so you know what you need to replicate with your actors.
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The issues with object tracking has multiple levels.
The first is the physical. There are several discussions about this in the forum. Just search for tracking or especially 'infrared'.
I guess touchOSC or accelorometer data is kind of problematic, as you always have to have a reset point somewhere.
Kinect works well for a smaller stage scale. For bigger ones infrared tracking is probably the most unexpensive solution and kind of easy, if you have a black stage without ir sources or reflecting objects on it. But I have in mind, someone allready used several kinect in combination to extend the area.
Eyes++ supports multiple 'blobs'. As long as there isn't a specific combination of objects and followspots, this would support multiple 'targets' easily. Even a specific combination would be possible, but dependending on the initial circumstances, with different reliability.
If you google for 'isadora tracking tutorial', you'll find several videos about this topic.Isadora does have DMX support, which could be used, but to be honest, this is not as intuitive as it is for other software, as it doesn't support fixture sets or similar approaches. There is a tutorial in the tutorial section anyway.
Another posibility would be to go via OSC and control another software like QLC+ which can translate it.A different Idea could be to use one big video projector and just simulate a lightspot with the shapes actor of isadora.
