Lara's Research Updates

Putting together everything I've researched and learned so far, created a mini set with DMX lighting on finals week. I've started by gathering all the equipment and setting up all the connections. After a few iterations, my final set included a camera, 5 Aputure lights (controlled via CRMX), and a big screen displaying the Unreal Engine scene for background. For my first test, I wanted to use a scene of a city with multiple, moving light sources. Looking through the Epic store, I found the free Soul City sample and decided to use it for its night scene. I've set up my scene in Unreal Engine and parented a Cine Camera and Scene Capture 2D camera to a locator. These cameras were facing the opposite way from each other. This way, the Cine Camera would render the scene behind the actor and put it on the display screen, while the Scene Capture 2D camera would calculate lighting information from the scene in front of the actor and send it to Pixel Mapping. To make the world move...

Here is a small update for the LED strip lights: I've been trying to solder 4 wires running between the LED lights and the decoder. These wires are for the little conductive pads on the lights corresponding to RGB channels + power. However, after two tries and ruining 3 different conductive pads, I've realized that soldering is not a viable option for these lights. The pads are too tiny to solder each wire individually without making a mess. And if I manage to solder properly, the cooled metal peels off from the light strip too easily, probably due to the shiny and slippery surface of the strip. For now, I decided to continue focusing on CRMX to get it to work and focus on adding the LED lights afterward.

The day has finally come!! CRMX finally works!!! :D I started my setup by unboxing our new CMRX transmitter and connecting it to power and to the Gateway box. This way, the transmitter should receive DMX data from Unreal and wirelessly send it over to Aputure lights. Setting up the transmitter didn't require any additional steps within Unreal since the DMX data has been long setup to be sent to all 4 ports of Gateway. This brand (Godox) also sells CRMX receivers that pair up easily with the transmitter. But those are mainly used for studio lights that do not already have CRMX capability. With Aputure lights, we didn't need to buy extra receivers. One receiver per light can get very expensive depending on the setup. Next, I worked on connecting the lights to the transmitter. This process was not as straightforward as I thought it would be. I had to do a lot of back-and-forth between resetting the light settings, activating CRMX, turning on the transmitter pairing, and hoping tha...