The three shows took place on three consecutive weekends. The team, that dealt with the lighting and video side for these special shows consisted of light and video designer Roland Greil, associate designer Troy Eckerman, studio associate and LX programmer Michael Kuehbandner, LX programmer Klaus Kubesch, video programmers Leo Hermann and Tom Levin as well as video director Haegar De. The previsualization suite, running the Depence software system, was built by THE X4 COLLECTIVE under the directive of Markus Neubauer.
“For me and the whole team Depence was a great support in the realization of the three shows in Munich. Without such a Previz set up, we would not have been able to cope with the workload and deliver such detailed shows. Especially the detail accuracy of the system and the realistic reproduction are impressive and made our work easier.” – Roland Greil, Light & Video Designer
As the creation of the Depence visualization was a key element in preparing the actual shows, performance of the files was given some very special attention, while nonetheless keeping the visualization of the stage, musicians, live crowd as well as the whole architecture around as detailed as possible. This gave the show design team the best possible outcome to get going with their ideas. To display the different stage setups of the artists, layers were applied within the Depence project, and all fixtures were multi-patched within the lighting desk. The previz suit itself along with all technical requirements was built within a climatized container in the backstage area of the stage. A wide 50” screen along with four 21” screens were placed for each working space and a DMX camera was used to program various virtual viewpoints as well as fly overs via GrandMA console. Possible video streams from the local Disguise Server were transformed from HDMI signal into NDI and thus streamed into the Depence Server.
“The Depence mapping editor was a great help in dealing with the video surfaces. The outputs of the Disguise VX 4 server came into the system via HDMI->NDI converters and could thus be mapped to the video surfaces without any problems. The resulting latencies were pleasantly low. By consistently optimizing all of the 3D objects in our model, the overall performance was equally pleasing given the scale of the project!” – Markus Neubauer, THE X4 COLLECTIVE
Since it was critical for the modeling of the Depence project to be as accurate as possible, actual 3D models of the architecture were first created in and exported from Vectorworks, then optimized in Cinema 4D to get the best result resource-wise and finally imported to Depence. The stage itself was over 130 meters in width, 65 meters deep and 20 meters high and placed on an open-air area with around 100.000 square meters. The mapping of the massive LED walls used for the concerts was also done directly in Depence, all with the help of the integrated mapping editor. To that, one special facet of the visualization was the realistic and functioning display of the semi-transparent LED wall in the center of the design as well as the mapping of the Neonflex LEDs all along the edges of the stage and it’s back. The patching of the project was done in Vectorworks as well and then was easily imported via MVR file into Depence.
“As a Studio Associate, i am in charge of translating Roland's design ideas into technical planning documents from the very beginning and it was especially important to me to have a pre-programming that is as close to reality as possible and at the same time performant enough to represent this enormously large stage and terrain. Due to the close cooperation with Markus Neubauer and our common experiences from many previous Depence projects, we succeeded again this time.” – Michael Kuehbandner
Equipment used:
- 479x Movinglights
- 429x intelligent Lights
- 164x 8 light Blinder
- 18x MDG ATME
- 18x LOOK ORCA
- 5x GrandMA 3 Full Size im 2er Mode
- 8x GrandMA2 NPUs
- 40960 MA Parameter available, around 32000 used Parameters
www.x4.design
Bavaria Sounds LX & Video Creative Crew:
Tom Levin Schwenzle | Video Programmer & Design Assistant
Haegar Deutsch | IMAG Director
Michael Kuehbandner | Studio Associate & LX Programmer
Roland Greil | Lighting and Video Designer
Bianca Mastroianni | FollowMe
Troy Eckerman | Associate Designer
Leo Herrmann | Video Programmer
Klaus Kubesch | LX Programmer
