Virtual Reality for Lighting Simulation in Events
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Virtual Reality for Lighting Simulation in Events João Cintra Torres Reis Araújo Thesis to obtain the Master of Science Degree in Computer Engineering Supervisors: Prof. Alfredo Manuel dos Santos Ferreira Júnior Prof. Paulo Jorge Fernandes Carreira Examination Commitee Chairperson: Prof. Ernesto José Marques Morgado Supervisor: Prof. Alfredo Manuel dos Santos Ferreira Júnior Member of the Committee: Prof. Renato Jorge Caleira Nunes May 2014 To my parents, Rita and Joao˜ ii Acknowledgments This thesis was only possible thanks to the support and orientation of Prof. Doutor Alfredo Ferreira, who proved to be an invaluable mentor by guiding me along the way. His help was crucial and insightful despite having ever more responsibilities given to him. I am deeply grateful for his trust in my thesis proposal and all the time he dedicated in order to achieve the best with this work. For guiding me with his precious knowledge in the lighting industry, I would like to thank Prof. Doutor Paulo Carreira, who showed great interest in my work, right after being part of the examination commit- tee of my masters project course. I regret not being more present in our weekly discussions, which lead the way to this project. I want to thank my parents, Joao˜ and Rita, and my dear sister Madalena, for their emotional support and constant help on polishing this thesis. My family’s tireless dedication while raising and helping me meant I had the strength to finish my course and this final work. I am forever indebted to them. I want to thank Diogo Gil Henriques, my best friend and colleague in this university, for his constant help and feedback throughout all the stages of this project. Together, we shared the same goal of finish- ing our Computer Science course, working every day in the same room, laughing, panicking, but always helping each other in the most difficult times. I will miss Diogo talking to his prototype and requesting the most awkward LEGO pieces for weeks without stopping. I would also like to thank the help of my colleagues Daniel Mendes and Fernando Fonseca for their help and precious suggestions to improve the prototype. Finally, a big thank you goes to the love of my life, Catarina, my girlfriend and best friend. After all we’ve been through this year, I just can’t imagine making it without her love and support. Thank you for your endless patience. iii Abstract Lighting in events such as concerts, theatres and nightclubs is progressing massively. The technology involved is what enables the highly intense and powerful shows to stand out. In order to ensure great performances, technicians are now using light simulation tools to design, program and preview their shows beforehand. Recent applications consist of elaborate interfaces with complex tools and render engines to provide the most visual feedback in advance, avoiding production costs and stress prior to an event. However, these interfaces tend to be overwhelmingly sophisticated, requiring considerable learn- ing efforts. Also, and despite the advancements on the visualization side, there is a lack of immersive 3D interaction capabilities, which could provide a far more realistic user experience. This work tackles this challenge. We propose an immersive light design and pre-visualization inter- face, aiming to increase the preview realism and suit people with no experience in stage design. Our prototype, VRLight, couples a head-mounted display and a gesture-based interface for visualization and real-time interactive light simulation. The design and control tasks are split in order to increase cre- ativity and focus on both sides. In the immersive environment, the director performs the design and pre-visualization routines, and complex control is externally carried out by the technician, using any light console of his preference. To validate this solution, a group of non-expert users was involved in a set of tests. Results shown that users with no knowledge prior to the evaluation could easily perform stage design tasks. This thesis follows the new Project Work structure, started this year in the Computer Engineering course. Keywords: VRLight, virtual reality, immersive visualization, stage lighting design, events. iv Resumo A tecnologia associada a` iluminac¸ao˜ em eventos - concertos, teatros e discotecas - progride a grande ritmo. De forma a garantir performances notaveis,´ os tecnicos´ de luz recorrem a ferramentas de simulac¸ao˜ da iluminac¸ao˜ para produzir, programar e pre-visualizar´ os seus espetaculos.´ As aplicac¸oes˜ mais recentes consistem em interfaces elaboradas e complexos mecanismos de renderizac¸ao˜ que visam possibilitar o maior n´ıvel de feedback de antemao,˜ evitar custos de produc¸ao˜ e stress antes de um evento. Contudo, estas interfaces temˆ tendenciaˆ a ser demasiado sofisticadas, requerendo um alto esforc¸o de aprendizagem. Para alem´ disso, e apesar da evoluc¸ao˜ no que toca ao aspecto grafico,´ faltam explorar tecnicas´ de interacc¸ao˜ imersiva em 3D, que oferecem uma experienciaˆ bastante mais realista ao utilizador. Este trabalho foca-se nesse desafio. E´ proposta uma interface imersiva de desenho e pre-visualizac¸´ ao˜ da iluminac¸ao,˜ com vista a aumentar o realismo da visualizac¸ao˜ e pass´ıvel de utilizac¸ao˜ por pessoas sem experiencia.ˆ O prototipo´ VRLight junta oculos´ de realidade virtual com uma interface baseada em gestos para a visualizac¸ao˜ e interacc¸ao˜ em tempo real com a simulac¸ao.˜ As tarefas de desenho e controlo sao˜ separadas para aumentar a criatividade e concentrac¸ao.˜ No ambiente imersivo, o director realiza rotinas de desenho e pre-visualizac¸´ ao˜ e o controlo e´ realizado externamente pelo tecnico´ de luzes, utilizando qualquer consola da sua preferencia.ˆ Para validar esta soluc¸ao,˜ foi envolvido um grupo de utilizadores sem experiencia.ˆ Os resultados mostraram que utilizadores sem qualquer conhecimento anterior conseguiram facilmente realizar as tarefas de desenho de palcos propostas. Esta tese segue a nova estrutura de Trabalho de Projecto, iniciada este ano no Mestrado de Engen- haria Informatica´ e de Computadores Palavras-chave: VRLight, realidade virtual, visualizac¸ao˜ imersiva, iluminac¸ao˜ de palcos, even- tos. v Contents Acknowledgments........................................... iii Abstract................................................. iv Resumo.................................................v Contents................................................ vii List of Tables.............................................. viii List of Figures.............................................x List of Abbreviations..........................................1 1 Introduction 3 1.1 Motivation.............................................3 1.2 Problem description.......................................4 1.3 Proposed approach.......................................4 1.4 Document outline.........................................5 2 State of the Art 7 2.1 Lighting simulation applications.................................7 2.2 Light control............................................9 2.3 Virtual lighting applications for event simulation........................ 11 2.4 User interfaces for lighting and music in events........................ 14 2.5 Immersive visualization and interaction............................. 18 2.6 Discussion............................................ 21 3 VRLight 24 3.1 Conceptual description...................................... 24 3.2 Architecture description..................................... 25 3.3 Immersive visualization and interaction............................. 26 3.4 Connection to external light controllers............................. 28 3.5 Real time light control...................................... 31 3.6 Virtual stage environment.................................... 32 3.7 Light design............................................ 33 3.8 User movement.......................................... 37 3.9 VRLight prototype........................................ 41 vi 3.10 Summary............................................. 43 4 Validation 45 4.1 Testing setup and user profile.................................. 45 4.2 Tasks description......................................... 47 4.3 Experimental results....................................... 50 4.4 Summary............................................. 52 5 Conclusions and Future Work 55 Bibliography 62 A From design to pre-visualization 63 B VRLight’s Fixtures 65 C User tests 66 C.1 Task times............................................. 66 C.2 Questionnaire........................................... 67 C.3 Questionnaire results...................................... 71 vii List of Tables 2.1 Pre-visualization software feature comparison......................... 21 4.1 Fixtures to be added to the stage structure........................... 48 viii List of Figures 2.1 DIALux simulation.........................................8 2.2 Relux simulation..........................................8 2.3 Boyles VR environment......................................9 2.4 Lighting control console...................................... 10 2.5 D-PRO controller software.................................... 10 2.6 Stage design diagram....................................... 11 2.7 Visualization diagram....................................... 12 2.8 ESP Vision simulation....................................... 12 2.9 ESP Vision user interface..................................... 12 2.10 WYSIWYG preview and live results............................... 13 2.11 grandMA 3D simulation.....................................