blog.andy-coates.com

of interest…….

  • / / / /

    Twenty Twenty Six so far!

    Again, with all the best intentions of doing a regular update to the blog, I have failed. I do wonder if its a sign of the times, getting distracted by things and time passing by us. So here i am in an endeavour to do a mega blog update to cover not everything but some chunky interesting gigs this year.

    Emily, Andy, Adam, Dan, Chris, Ben, Pete, Jack

    A fair bit has been happening this year so far so I’ve decided to do a post about all the exciting things that have happened in the last 6 month. The year started again with the Joy Awards 2026, the show was in the same building again this year and everyone had the lay of the land now and venue familiarity.

    Again we had a load of LED screen to play with this year I spent a lot of time in the planning & preproduction as things changed and evolved, this really helped make it a smooth time onsite. It was almost he same team as last year with all of us working for Chris, Jack was main programmer, Emily was looking after content wrangling with her amazing file kitty software that really helped speed up everything. Adam and myself were supporting Jack with programming and Pete was the glue between us and all the other departments. Also not forgetting Ben and Dan from QED who supplied the system and did an outstanding job onsite keeping everything running smooth as butter

    Our control room was packed full of screens and I think since last year we’ve cracked the best layout for all of us and everyone’s workstations to be able to work efficiently. This year the outside air quality was really bad so I ended up buying an air purifier for our cabin that Jack aptly named Airy.

    After a great 2 weeks in the desert we were all back home and I was off to help Graymatter as they were doing a projection install at media city Manchester. Dan booked me to come with my laser scanner to get an accurate model of the surfaces been projected on.

    When I arrived onsite I got to work scanning the different areas which required several scans to collect al the data we needed. I’ve had the Faro focus s70 for a few years now and have built up an incredibly good workflow to generate a clean accurate UV’d mesh for the media server with a fast turnaround time.

    Whilst the projector’s were going in I was finalising the mesh and line-up grids to put into d3. When making mesh & grids for projection line-up I always think about how its going to work when using Quick Cal in d3. With all the scan data I also utilize any parts the building geometry that can be used as reference points to help with line-up.

    The lower blocks of the building really lent itself well to projection and as the faces had loads of super useful reference points I included these int he mesh and line-up grid which made line-up from d3 using Quick Cal incredibly fast. It lined up so well and quickly that there was almost no warp required to pull it in.

    I was only around to line-up the lower bits and then Ash tackled the tower. The whole team did a really nice job of the install in absolutely Baltic conditions as there was a lot of large projectors used which needed protecting from the elements too.


    I very rarely do any work in the north east so when my good friend Iain from Multicord AV asked if I would come and program on a local gig I jumped at the chance. This was the comeback of a gig that was last on in 2020 called Sunday For Sammy which is a gig to raise funds for the Sunday for Sammy foundation helping provide opportunities for kids to get into performing arts

    It was really nice to be doing something local after many years and also catch up with friends I’ve not seen in a long time. It was the first year they were cutting live camera to the main screen so I put together a flexible system that for running programmed visuals to screen plus on the fly band content and love camera. It was a great gig for a really good cause and an absolute pleasure to be on it with lots of good folk.

    I was going to add in the BTS comeback gig into this blogpost but after going through the photos i have and notes on the gig and the planning running up to the gig I decided its totally worth its own post. Instead here’s a picture of Pete looking very happy as we were working with the local team late at night.

    Late 2025 Nevil form Pixway got in touch as they were looking after the project setup and install for the 2026 – 2027 lake stage show at Bregenz . In classic Lake Stage fashion this was a large spectacular set which was to be projected on as a setting for the backdrop of the opera La Traviata. I’ve worked with the Bregenz team and the Pixway team in the past so was more than glad to be asked to help with this years production.

    This year the set was built to represent a huge broken mirror serving as the backdrop and the stage. The set was really well constructed and finished with a printed viny on the surface to give the look of a mirror but also be able to projected projected light like a convectional screen. In addition the centre part of the set moved, there were loads of axis of automation that moved the “shards” inwards to create a space for a huge black sphere to come out on a huge automated arm creating a huge reverse shattered mirror effect. I arrived at Bregenz checked into the hotel then went to meet Paul who I’d not seen in AGES. The theatre were having some drinks outside to celebrate part of the staging finally being finished and they has a blackboard for everyone involved to sign which we both signed.

    It was really nice to see many familiar faces at the drinks from my visit there a couple of years ago helping Luke Halls studio with the projection element on Madame Butterfly. My roll on this was to help Pixway with laser scans verify that all the automated axes rotated and landed correct to the provided rigged 3d model thy had been provided with. Paul had a custom build of d3 that allowed him to take in a rigged FBX model and push scaled automation data into the model so it followed the real world automation movement. Prior to coming onsite I proposed to get the real world data with 3 scans from the central position Open, Closed & Mid, I then repeated the process from other scan locations with careful logging of which scan was which. This meant that I could use the initial 3 scans as the perfect anchor point as it was never moved and then add in the additional scans to each the Open, Closed & Mid sets so we had 3 separate overall scan data but they all shared the same exact datum. Below are some screenshots form the recap project.

    I was onsite for a couple of days to make sure I could get all the scan data I needed to do an accurate reconstruction. After a day of scanning from multiple positions and processing the data I could see that some of the lower shards weren’t getting picked up very well because of angle of attack from the scanner. The data was usable but I knew we could do better so I pitched the idea of taking the scanner three quarters up the crane tower to get a few more additional scans and permission was immediately granted.

    The following morning I met Nino at the venue and he took me around to the jetty which ran around the back of the stage. I didn’t realise it but the only way to get to the crane was via a tiny tin boat so I got the scanner and stand off the jetty into the boat and we made our 20 second (probably less) journey to the crane base where I had to put the scanner and sand on to the concrete ballast plinth then shimmy up off the rocky boat. It was all pretty fast and I was full of adrenaline as that morning I was just expecting a small bridge to be there from the stage to the crane base. I think I went about five story’s up on the crane to get the optimal shot for the scanner with a bit of creative leg positioning.

    I was only going to do three scans but decided to do a second set of three from a couple of levels down as more data is better than less and with this opportunity it would be silly not to. After almost 2 hour up the crane scanning and repositioning the scanner I was back down with the kit and I called on the radio to get picked up off crane island. It was a different gent that picked me up and when we got to the jetty he insisted I come join the crew for a light lunch which was gladly welcomed. I cant remember the names of everyone but the whole team were incredibly welcoming and friendly and had an amazing selection of local cheeses meats and bread it was a great final day. After lunch I got the scan data off the scanner and onto my laptop to verify that the captures were good and that they would merge into the base scans. Once these were all good I said my goodbyes and thankyous to everyone and headed to the train station so start the journey home.

    Once I got ack to the studio I properly processed the scans back in the studio and did extensive clean-up on the three scan sets as these were getting handed over to the original cad person to check and modify pivot and as built positions mainly for when the structure was open. These are some images Paul sent me as they were tweaking the axis to get the projection sticking to the shards. Its quite a feat to track compound axis like this with so may variables in play, below is a press image from the Festspielhaus website, it was really nice to be involved with this production.

    © Bregenzer Festspiele / Anja Koehler

    Only a couple of weeks after getting back from Bregenz I was on my way to Vienna to join the team again for the Eurovision Song Contest 2026. Basically on the whole production it was the same team as Basel with a few additions for stage managing this year. It was really nice to get onsite and see so many familiar faces and also some people we hadn’t seen in quite a while. Once again CT Northern Europe were providing screens, control and all of infrastructure for this across site and they had our room set up for us upon our arrival, they are such a good team and great bunch of folk.

    We had quite a tight turnaround from arriving onsite to being ready for first tech rehearsals, Luke and Emily already had a load programmed offline in the preproduction week but we needed to get this al in the system and check everything. In addition there were quite a few prop pieces this yere that we were driving the LED with video. I needed to see the as-built set and then tweak the corresponding UV, we were supplied with some plans of the props but not all of them were exactly to the drawing which sometimes happens.

    The set was still being finished when we arrived too but the teams worked hard to get it all finished and we were up and running for the first tech rehearsal with time to spare. I’m not going to go over the details of this years Eurovision as it is very similar to last years in terms of we spend an extraordinary amount of time in rehearsals, updating content, checking against camera shots, and repeat. It was really nice to have some developers from d3 come to site for a week at a time which really was invaluable. Another tool which was invaluable was something Emily has been working on for the last year which is a content checking tool that checks verifies and distributes the content to the servers. Not only that but there are notes options per piece of content where programmers can log errors of feedback to on central point where producers and the content houses can respond to. It’s such a good system and Emily is constantly updating it, here’s a link to File Kitty

    Luke, Joe & myself had been had been to this kebab stand close to the venue a couple of times and promised to take James there when he came out to do a dev week. I can honestly say its probably the best kebab and falafel wrap (separate occasions) I’ve ever had, we all let the kebab stand after eating it very happy that day.

    Joe, James, Luke

    After just over a month together working closely for many hours a day in a small dark room everyone was till smiling and happy to hang out together which I think speaks volumes of having the right team chemistry. Some days aren’t always smooth and patience does get frayed but on these occasions everyone recognised these moments and discussed them after the event which is so important on gigs like.

    I think that’s a good place to end, its been a while since I’ve updated the blog and have forgotten how enjoyable it is going over old memories and documenting them. I’ve no idea who actually reads this but I hope over the last 16 year’s of writing it its made a positive impact on some folk.

    Andy

  • / /

    Boomerang, a projection planning tool for C4D

    I’ve decided to release my cinema 4d projection planning tool called BOOMERANG that I’ve been using for quite a few years now to the community. The base of this started with a project shared by my friend Luke where he had built the core of the projector in Espresso in c4d and from there I’ve added a few things and wrote an export script so the projection plan can be exported as a csv and imported directly into disguise.

    My workflow is generally like this, the client sends over a 3d model or a plan etc in some format, CAD, rhino3d, FBX or scan data. I then process the files if need be and then 3d and bring it into c4d setting my own datum point, scale and rotation to match the d3workflow. From here I then setup the props and screens so I have an accurate 3d model of what the real world setup is going to be. Within this 3d world I can do everything I need in a unified workspace and that includes projection planning with Boomerang, I used to use mapping matter but it slowed down the process exporting and importing into the browser now I have everything under one hood ad full quick control of all parameters.

    The tool isn’t perfect and only gives a LUX reading at the target point, the surface reflection must be taken into account and basically a real world knowledge about how the light works when projected on different surfaces at different angles is very advantageous. I’ve built it for my own use and aim to explain my usage of it here. The above image is based on the project from the planning for Carmen at Bregenz with LHS back in 2017 updated for 2025. To make it a bit more clearer Ill start with a simple 2 x projector setup to explain the workings of Booomerang.

    In this example we have a simple setup with a 2 x projector blend on a wide’ish screen. Each projector group consists of parts, the projector body and the target both which can be moved with the conventional C4D widgets.

    My workflow is to position the projector to where i think the physical position will be based off the received CAD, and then using the 4 split view I move around the look-at point to get the coverage I want.

    Positioning and pointing things is all good but the real juicy part is when you select the projector in the objects window and select the USER DATA tab in the attributes window. This allows you to set the following parameters highlighted in green below.

    This all should be self explanatory in terms of input data, knowing the surface reflection is a bit of a black art when projecting on non conventional surfaces so this requires a bit of prior knowledge in what works and what doesn’t. The most important and useful part of this rig is the ability to know what the resulting lux will be based on all of your inputs.

    IMPORTANT : The lux is only calculated in a flat plane from the projector exactly where the look-at point is. So if you have a setup where the projector is quite off axis to the surface (like the image below) then there will varying degrees of brightness, the further the light has to travel the darker the resulting lux, and the shorter the distance the brighter the resulting lux

    Once you have your coverage with a projector off-axis like this, it is good practice to temporary move the look-at point to the extremes (the resulting dark area) and make sure that lux reading is bright enough in the fall-off region. Again, I cant stress this enough, this tool is great to help with planning and PJ coverage in a 3d space but also a good understanding of how projected light behaves when hitting various surfaces is a must.

    STARTING A NEW PROJECT

    At the end of this post I’ll link to the boomerang simple setup c4d project which you can use to copy and paste projectors into your own c4d project. The only real prerequisite is that your project scale is set to meters and its usually a good idea to have your units set to meters too.

    You can either use the simple setup and build your study within there or you can simply copy and paste the projectors (the whole null group) from the simple setup into your project, the only important part as noted above is that the project is set to meters.

    Exporting to the Mapping Matter format

    Within the download there is also a python script that exports the projectors to the mapping matter format for ease of use to import into d3. To use this, open the script editor and locate the python file. Before you can export you will need to delete all the lights in your scene else it will fail, I’m still figuring out a way around this.
    When you hit export you will be presented with the save to dialogue box to save wherever you like, from here you can import the projectors straight into d3 with the usual method.

    Here is a link to download where you should download the whole thing as a zip and then extract, please let me know how you get on with this tool in the comment or drop me an email.

    DOWNLOAD BOOMERANG 1.0.0

    No comments on Boomerang, a projection planning tool for C4D

  • ESC Final Weeks SHOWTIME!!!

    The first 2 Eurovision blog posts I did onsite in the downtimes between tech and rehearsals and thought I was going to continue the trend but in all honesty there wasn’t a whole load to blog about. Once we got into rehearsals and shows, we were very much into groundhog day territory repeating the same processes every day of many many rehearsals, updating content and programming based off client feedback and repeating until showtime. To make this final Eurovision 2025 post condensing almost three weeks worth of work and play into a single post based from my collection of photos and memories from the gig.

    For remote content delivery we decided to use MASV for file transfers which is a high speed secure file transfer service. Each country had its own portal and password protected login page with a short form to fill in to identify the packages of content. Once a package was uploaded it was then automatically downloaded at our end to the main content ingestion machine, it was also pushed to Frame for review by the contest team and once done we got a slack notification. Onsite we had a dedicated 10gb connection to our room provided by the venue which we often saturated as MASV will use the full bandwidth. It was such a great workflow and we were never once missed a rehearsal slot waiting for downloads to complete.

    During our stay in Basel we had 2 full days off on separate occasions, the first one Luke and myself joined some of the lighting team and went for a float down the Rhine an on our second day off we decided to take the train an hour and a half south to Lucerne. This was a wonderful day off away from screens where we hung out by the lake drinking beers playing uno on the grass with the occasional dip in the water.

    We were staying at the Senevita apartments for our time in Basel which was a really nice apartment, 15 mins walk to the venue. The Senevita is also an assisted living complex for the elderly and it was nice saying hello to the residents in the morning as they were going for breakfast and we were going to work. Most of the elevators int he complex had pictures of flowers in them but one was empty from the time we arrived there so we decided to print a picture of Sam’s dog Norman for the residents to enjoy. Unfortunately it was removed the following day but it was fun whilst it lasted.

    Maybe about two or three weeks into being onsite Gustav & Philip created CTFM which was a webpage linked to APIs where the whole production could put in three song requests a day and there was dedicated time slots each day for these requests to be played. For the rest of the time there was a fantastic radio station of songs curated by Nora. If you wanted to listen to CTFM you just had to ask coms help at Riedel and they would add it to the panel.

    As we got closet to the show days there were more ducks appearing and they weren’t coming form us this time. The camera departments had an addition of a little baby duck tot he family when doing sync checks, it was a joy to see everyone getting in on this.

    This is probably a good place to wrap up this final ESC post, its was a fantastic gig to be on with such a good bunch of folk. We had three very clean broadcasts all down to the hard work of the massive team involved.

    Us and just some of team CT after the final show, high spirits and smiley faces.