South Korea - Multimedia integrators SoundKoreaENG and Metaspace relied on Screenberry to power a 3D mapping show for the Seoul Light DDP 2024 Autumn Festival. The festival took place in downtown Seoul for 11 days from 29 August to 8 September.
The highlight of the event was a spectacular projection mapping show on the Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP), renowned as the world's largest three-dimensional amorphous structure. Designed by British-Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid, the DDP's futuristic exterior, with its fluid, curved forms, resembles a colossal mushroom hovering above the ground. This architecture offers an exceptional but challenging canvas for 3D mapping.
To illuminate the expansive 222m facade of the DDP, the production team employed 26 projectors (14 x Barco UDX-4K40 and 12 x Barco UDX-W32) placed in seven containers that were positioned at varying heights in front of the building. Orchestrating this array of projectors was a Screenberry Atlas x8 media server. To route the 26 outputs from the single media server, the team utilised seven Datapath Fx4 multi-display controllers. Screenberry also handled the audio output for the show. An additional media server served as a hot backup, ensuring reliability.
The key to achieving impressive results was Screenberry's advanced 3D Scene editor, which offers tools for precise content mapping and alignment on intricate 3D shapes, such as those at the DDP. By utilising a detailed digital model of the building and employing pose estimation algorithms, Screenberry finely adjusted the position, orientation, throw ratio, and lens shift of the virtual projectors to perfectly match the physical ones. This technique allowed for merging all projectors into a seamless image and mapping the building with pixel-perfect precision while significantly reducing setup time.
"DDP's façade is composed of thousands of unique tiles. To transform it into a projection mapping surface, the calibration grid must align perfectly with each tile. Screenberry's calibration toolset allowed us to achieve this with remarkable precision," says Mr. Sangdong Kim from SoundKoreaENG.
The projection show featured interpretations of the works of the Korean artist Kim Whanki, whose abstract paintings are known for their exploration of diverse hues, patterns, lines, and spaces. Additionally, the media art label Verseday created a projection show celebrating the 10th anniversary of the DDP by exploring the connection between the past, present, and future through light and digital art.
