Camera Vignette Alpha/Shadow

Greetings,

I have been working with TouchDesigner for two weeks now so I’m quite the novice. I would like to take what geometry I’ve made and project it using a projector. I have geometry that is constantly changing scale from small to really big so the camera in TD sometimes is too close to catch all of it. I could dynamically control the camera so that all of the geometry is within the frame of the camera. What I would rather do, however, is apply some type of filter of sorts to apply a vignette shadow over what is rendered.

By doing this it would prevent me from having sharp edges from the projector where some colored light is still being projected. If the vignette shadow is strong enough no edges of the projector will be visible and only the geometry in the center of the scene would be visible. Additionally, this might require some alpha settings so that as geometry gets closer to the edge of the camera frame it fades away. This would, again, prevent me from having geometry sharply cut off due to the frame of the TD camera and the constraints of my physical projector.

Also, if anyone wants to give me an idea of how to control the camera position so that the geometry is always within the frame without just zooming out really far I’d be all ears. Thanks for any and all help. I’m really enjoying TD thus far!

mega_pointe,

You might think about this a couple of different ways. One would be to consider using the lighting in your scene to accomplish this effect by using a cone light rather than a point source. This will allow you to adjust the angle, delta, and rolloff of the light - in effect simulating a kind of vignette.

Another option would be to think about doing this with a ramp and compositing your render with this ramp.

Either approach will take some fine tune adjustment, but this should at least help you get started.

M
lightingMask.1.toe (6.31 KB)