Creation techniques of videomapping for dome, using Google's virtual painting software Tilt Brush VR

“Somnium” project
Film 50 minutes, videomapping for dome.
Creation techniques of videomapping for dome, using 
Google's virtual painting software Tilt Brush VR

Commissioned by the Symphonyc Orchestra of Bogotá, for the 50th anniversary of the Planetarium of Bogotá, It was presented in a private function at the celebration show on Friday, December 13, 2019, and in two public functions on Saturday, December 14 at the 23 mts, 388 seats, planetarium dome of Bogotá.
This document illustrates very briefly my use of VR painting techniques for production
of contents used in videomapping in Dome.


Preproduction:
Regular face-to-face and Skype meetings were held, and work began on a brief script
that the symphony art director built based on the theme of the history of observation
of space.
It was possible to write music and create video from scratch for 11 tracks, or scenes, 40 minutes.
The process of creating the script was worked in the style of my usual work on TV and created the
narrative lines that were essential for the creation of virtual environments
This is how the decision was made on use this technique, in the place of generative video as
TouchD or Notch and neither the use of CG or 3d or digital composition or 360 register,
and virtual painting was chosen for most scenes.
More than anything for its sculptural sense.

Production: virtual painting
We worked with 2 digital painters working in Tilt Brush as it appears in the photo, Jose Guillermo
Díaz virtual painter and Juan Andres Molano, plastic artist of the National University of Colombia, with experience in sculpture,
and a 3d technician, Joan Baez, who used Blender and Cinema4d, to work with native
and external Tilt Brush models.

The virtual painting process was started as usual in VR, in this case 2 were used
HTC VIVE systems, mounting on 2 PCs of 16 GB RAM with NVIDIA GTX 1800 cards from
11 Gb and a GTX 1060 of 6 Gb.
Software: Win10, Steam VR, Google TiltBrush VR

The first Tilt Brush sketches were made according to visual references and the musical model,
a total of 100 virtual paintings were made between tests and final developments.
Making a "paint" of these takes an average of 3 hours. The digital painting process includes
in addition to the plastic creation a process of cinematographic creation in the sense
of using the camera within a virtual space, but that is another issue.

A space of 5x5 meters to program was calculated according to previous experiences
the virtual space needed to move the camera and to have ease of movement.






Postproduction:
Software: Win10, Google TiltBrush, Premiere, After Effects, Media Encoder
For the process of adapting the VR content from tiltbrush to fulldome, changes must be made
in the .cfg file of the Tilt Brush document folder, as seen in the instructions in
https://docs.google.com/document/d/11ZsHozYn9FnWG7y3s3WAyKIACfbfwb4PbaS8cZ_xjvo/preview#
to be able to make an offline render of the VR in the ideal size to finish in fulldome.
From the .cfg file you get a stereo frame 360 ​​of 4086 px 1: 1.
Once each "frame" is finished, this offline render can be done from the Tilt Brush, it is executed
the .bat file and uses an .usda file that contains the camera location data in the VR, generating a .png sequence and a 4k in 360 stereo format,




This file is similar to that produced by 360 stereoscopic cameras, and same way to
these videos, I got files of the fulldome format, by going through
AfterEffects and apply a standard VR converter to convert a 2: 1 stereo equidistant image to
a fulldome 1: 1 mono channel image, that is 2k.
Once finished we get a render in .png sequence to a maximum of 4k, with which we have
the material that was finalized in Premiere.

Videomapping in dome
During the projection process the PandoraPro server was connected to 6 BARCO 32k projectors, from this system the blend and mapping of the dome was made.




Conclusions
Digital painting is a work of details, it takes much longer than calculated to create one of
These virtual paintings and even more, prepare it for the fulldome format. However the result
It is quite effective and has a high visual impact, also allows you to define the creation line and
give it a well defined style.

The "Somnium" project began as a request of the Planetarium of Bogotá, for the celebration
of its 50 years of construction and became an experiment for both musicians and for
those who work in visuals. We would say that it is a unique event and it was a privilege and an honor
elaborate the visual pieces that accompanied the incredible live music of the Symphonyc Orchestra of Bogotá.


Thanks
This little document is a short description of this process and how this Commission was carried out.
I thank everyone here who helped, to the audience who honor us with their applauses
and with his massive assistance.
To Idartes, to Andres Garcia, Nicolas Rojas, to the entire planetarium, to Ivan its Director,
to Soledad Gamma, John Camacho, to everybody in the Symphonyc Orchestra, to Adam to Maria Jose, to those in Llorona productions, to Eddy, to German, Fernando and the planetarium projectionists, to Leo, Harold Julian, Edwin and everyone I don't remember. Others on the credits list.

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