This week I finally started with the technical side of my projection mapping project. First, I borrowed a beamer from a friend, but that didn’t go too well. The quality wasn’t that great and I forgot to take the remote with me. Then I got one from our media center at uni, which was made for short distances, so it fit my setup way better. Still, getting it to work wasn’t as easy as I thought. I guess I made things more complicated for myself by just plugging it in and hoping it would just work instead of reading the manual first. Once I got the beamer working and connected it to my Mac, I watched a short introduction tutorial about how to use MadMapper. That really helped me get started. It’s important to make sure it’s not mirroring the laptop screen, but instead working as an extended display. In MadMapper, you also have to make sure to select the correct screen (the projector) and activate fullscreen mode for the output. This way, it’s still possible to control things on the laptop while projecting. Three key technical steps I learned for setting it up properly:
- Set the projector as an extended display, not mirrored
- Match the resolution between MadMapper and the projector for the sharpest image
- Use the correct shapes in MadMapper (like Ellipse, Quad, or Masks), depending on what object you’re projecting on
After that was done, I moved on to experimenting with the software. At first, I didn’t upload any of my own files. I just played around with the materials that are already available in MadMapper. I projected some of the basic visuals directly onto my wall to get a feeling for how the software works. I spent some time trying out different shapes, effects, and settings to understand what everything does. To support that, I also watched a tutorial. It gave me a better overview of the platform and helped me understand how to create different scenes and manage the workflow. Later, I started getting a bit more creative. I projected some of the visuals onto my analog film photos that I had hanging on my wall. It was interesting to see how the light interacted with the pictures. I chose visuals that would highlight the details of the photos and kind of bring them to life. It actually looked really cool and added a new layer of depth to the images.
After that, I wanted to try something more organic, so I used my Monstera plant as a surface. It has these big, leaves with lots of holes in them – not exactly the easiest shape to work with. First, I projected a still image onto it. I realized that starting with a static image made it much easier to get the mapping right. Once the shape was aligned, I switched to moving visuals. Because the surface was so irregular, the animation sometimes looked a bit distorted, but in a nice way. It felt more alive and playful than just projecting onto a flat surface.
Some of the main takeaways from the tutorial and my own tests were that I now understand how to set up scenes and cues in MadMapper, which will be really helpful when I want to switch between projections during a show or installation. I also learned how to import and organize media like videos and images, which made my workflow feel more structured and less chaotic. And I got a better idea of how to align projections to real-life objects, even tricky ones like plants, curved shapes, or detailed textures.
All in all, I’m happy with my progress this week. I’m still figuring things out, but I’m slowly getting more comfortable with both the technical and creative sides of projection mapping.
