Another amazing feat using Touch Designer software, this time coming to us from the folks at Obscura Digital. They were tapped to projection map the Sheikh, Zayed Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi for the 40th Anniversary of the United Arab Emirates National Day Celebration. The massive undertaking required mapping a surface totaling 19,474 square meters, including many hand carved decorative surfaces and elements. The following video showcases some visual highlights from the event.
Source: Derivative
From Derivative: Earlier this month Obscura Digital used TouchDesigner to once again raise the bar of large scale architectural mapping and projection design, this time for the 40th Anniversary of the United Arab Emirates National Day Celebration at the Sheikh, Zayed Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi.
The sheer scale of this production was mindboggling with 49 projectors used to project on a total surface measuring 19,474 square meters which included 4 minarets and 12 domes necessitating “detailed accuracy of 3-D mapping and content quality on incredibly complex geometry of flat walls with intricate hand carved details and arcades with rows of columns.”
Interactive developer and artist Mary Franck who worked on the project for the duration had this to say: “It was certainly a dream projection-mapping job: incredible architecture, all white marble, completely artistic and cultural content. It was absolutely an honor to be a part of it.
We pulled it all altogether in record time. We have done projects of huge scale (the Coke building) and architectural complexity (Sydney Opera House) before, but this building is both exceptionally large and exceptionally complex. We were able to draw in the best methods from those jobs to make a TouchDesigner calibration and playback system for 20 channels of mapped video.
Things were actually pretty smooth on site– we’d been able to anticipate what we would need. Although the days were oppressively hot, the weather and dust weren’t problems.
To pull of mapping the complex geometry of the mosque we pulled many late nights, calibrating until the dawn call to prayer.
Sequestered in the control room, in abaya and hijab, I didn’t get to see the audience reaction, which I’m sad to have missed, but there was an air of real excitement and national pride.”
And here are a few more pertinent details from Obscura’s UAE Event Fact Sheet:
Equipment used / number and types of projectors / lumens / power:
44 projectors on the mosque (24 x 20K lumens + 20 18K lumens) = 840,000 lumens
5 projectors on the fort (5 x 20K lumens) = 100,000 lumens
940,000 lumens total
49 projectors x 3.2kW x 60 hours = 9,400kW total show (Mosque and Fort)
CO2 Offsetting plan:
9,400kW = 12,878 lbs of CO2 = 6 tons of CO2
(1.37 pounds CO2 per kW / 2204 pounds = 1 ton of CO2)
6 tons x 5 trees per ton = 30 trees
