Design and Simulation of Opera Lighting and Projection Effects Julie Dorsey, François X
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Design and Simulation of Opera Lighting and Projection Effects Julie Dorsey, François X. Sillion, Donald P. Greenberg To cite this version: Julie Dorsey, François X. Sillion, Donald P. Greenberg. Design and Simulation of Opera Lighting and Projection Effects. SIGGRAPH’91 conference proceedings, 1991, Las Vegas, United States. pp.41-50. inria-00510146 HAL Id: inria-00510146 https://hal.inria.fr/inria-00510146 Submitted on 17 Aug 2010 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. @ @ Computer Graphics, Volume 25, Number 4, July 1991 Design and Simulation of Opera Lighting and Projection Effects Julie O’B. Dorse.y Fran~ois X. Sillion Donald P. Greenberg Program of Computer Graphics Cornell University Ithaca, New York i 4853 Abstract additional issues are present, such as dynamic and intricate lighting and sets, projected background scenery, changing focus of attention, A major problem challenging opera designers is the inability to co- manipulation of implied perspective, multiple viewing points, mo- ordinate lighting, projection systems, and set designs in the prelim- tion of performers, and synchronization with music. Stage and light- inary planning phase. New computer graphics techniques, which ing designers, as well as conductors, rarely have [he opportunity to provide the set and lighting designer [be opportunity to evaluate, evaluate these effects together, Consequently, stage set and lighting test, and control opera designs prior to the construction of full scale designs are currently developed separately—being combined only systems are presented, These techniques—light source input. simu- in the Iast step of the process. lation of directional lighting, modeling of scenic projection systems, Presently. the only feasible method available for combining a and full three-dimensional simulation—show the potential for the limited stage and lighting design is the construction of small scale use of computer graphics in theater design, models. While this process dms give some insight into the visual The light source input component consists of a program for as- impact of the final production, it is a laborious. costly, incomplete, signing light source attributes with a set of theater lighting icons. and time-consuming endeavor. Furthermore, because of their small This module allows a designer to specify light source characteristics scale, these models are so inadequate for the evaluation of complex in a way familiar to the discipline and to make preliminary evalua- lighting effects that they are not commonly used, Thus, in pmctice, tions of the lighting conditions. the stage and lighting designers will often work in isolation from An extended progressive radiosity method is introduced to sim- each other. The bulk of the lighting designer’s task. then. occurs ulate the directional lighting characteristics which are specified by at the last minute—after the sets are assembled and in place on the the input program. stage. A new projection approach is presented to simulate the optical The primary objective of this paper is to provide the stage and effects of scenic projectors. In addition, a solution to the distortion lighting designer the opportunity to design and e\’a/uat~ /he Ii<qhring problem produced by angular projections is described. and projected scenery prim- to (he actual implementutimr. In partic - The above components are integrated to produce full three- ular, techniques for light source descriptions and specification, the dimensional simulations of the global illumination effects in an simulation of directional lighting, and the modeling of scenic pro- opera scene. jection systems have been developed. In addition, a solu(ion for the distortion problem in angular projections is introduced. The proce- CR Categories and Subject Descriptors: 1.3.0 [Computer dures have been combined to provide full three-dimensional simula- Graphics]: General; 1.3.7 [Computer Graphics]: Three Dimen- tions so that the proposed design strategy can be evaluated from any sional Graphics and Realism; J.2 [Computer Applications]: Per- viewer position, The variables are the positions of the stage sets, the forming Arts. locations, orientation, spatial emittance, and color of the lights, the General Terms: Algorithms number of lights which are illuminated, the background projection Additional Keywords and Phrases: opera and stage design, angu- systems and scenery, all within the given theater geometry. lar projection. simulation, radiosity, directional light sources, tex- Three famous opera houses have been selected to demonstrate ture mapping. the system: the Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center in New York City, La Scala in Milan, Italy, and the Staatsoper in Vienna, Austria. Due to space limitations. only the Metropolitan Opera is illustrated. 1 Introduction 2 Input for Lights Opera stage design is an extremely difficult task as, in addition to tbe standard architectural and aesthetic considerations, a number of In general, light sources have well-defined tinite geometries that greatly affect the distribution of the light emitted from the source. There are three types of abstract emissive geometries: point sources (zero dimensional), linear sources (one dimensional), and area Pcrm!ssmrrIO ci~py without fee all nr part of this material is gmrwaf sources (two dimensional) [23 ]. The light sources used in opera provided that (hc copies we not made or distributed for direct commercml udvantagc, [he ACM copyright nntice and the title of the production can be treated as point sources, since the lights are very publiciaiorr and its date appear. and notice is givmr that copying is by small and are located at a significant distance from the stage. permission of the Association for Compu!ing Machinery. To copy Perhaps the most important characteristic of a Iuminaire that must otherwise. or to republish. requires a fee andkx specific prmission. be included in a complete model of a light source is the luminous ( 199! AcM-()-89791-436-H/91 /(M)7/(MMl $00.7s 41 SIGGRAPH ’91 Las Veaas. 28 JuIv-2 Auaust 1991 intensity distribution. In contrast to the assumption typically used categories of lights used in opera production. Once a category has in computer graphics, most of the lights used in opera production beerr selected, it is possible to choose from a variety of instrument do not emit light of constant intensity in all directions. types and manufacturers within that category. A non-uniform intensity distribution must be specified, which Most of the Iuminaircs used in theater production have a spot describes the variations of the emitted intensity with direction. and flood focus intensity distribution associated with them. When llte lighting industry uses goniometric diagrams to represent these a lamp has been selected, a two dimensional icon is drawn in one vector-valued functions for easy interpretation [3]. These diagrams window, and the components of the lamp which move during the represent a planar slice through the vector field and thus plot the focusing of that particular instrument can be varied interactively, relative intensity as a function of angular direction (Figure 1). For making it possible to focus the instrument to the desired setting (Figure 2). To specify the intensity distribution, one window shows either a cartesian or polar goniometric diagram of the current lu- minous intensity dh-ibution or candle power distribution curve for g the light source. This diagram is updated continuously as the instru- I12. 12.5 ~20m ment is focused. To scale the dkribution, the maximum intensity which the lamp emits at the center of its beam is specified in units 93 ‘w f of cartdelas. 67, 1.5$‘m Each light source can have a unique pattern or slide. A library of patterns and slides to be used in projection has been compiled. The designer can select a pattern from the library and associate it with a ‘ml -50 0 50 Ial “bangle given light source. (a) (b) Color can be controlled by placing a transparent color filter be- tween the light source and the receiving surface(s). Using the filter section of the input program, an interactive color tool allows the Figure 1: A sample emission distribution. (a) Polar goniometric user to vary the characteristics of the filter used to color the light diagram. (b) Corresponding cartesian diagram. emitted by a lamp. It is possible to position a lamp at arty location relative to the stage htrninaires with concentrated beams, such as spotlights, cartesian environment. Most light sources are positioned on the light bridges, coordinates are preferred because of the need for more precision but occasionally they are placed on the front edge of the stage as than a polar curve allows. footlights or on temporary ladder-like structures along the sides. To aid the user in positioning the hunps, one viewport displays the light 2.1 Instruments and Lamps source with three dimensional transparent cones attached to it (op- tionally displayed) in the model of the stage. These cones represent In lighting design for opera, many different types of Iuminaires are the beam and field angles as well as the throw distance of the in- used. Although there appear to be a large number of different in- strument (see Appendix A). As the lights are positioned relative to strument styles used, each style is a variation on five particukw in- the stage area, the cones allow the user to visualize the direction in struments: the ellipsoidal reflector spotligh~ the Frcsnel spotlight; which the light will be emitted as well as how much illumination a the stripligh~ the ellipsoidal reflector floodlight; and the beam pro- particular area will receive.