Dataton Watchout mapping software, Watchmax media servers and Epson projectors were employed by Axis Three Dee Studios to create a projection mapped interpretation of the story of the Adiyogi’s divine appearance which is cast onto a 112ft tall statue of Adiyogi at the Isha Yoga Center in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India. Purple Vector India was responsible for the overall AV system integration for the project.
The premiere of Adiyogi Divya Darshanam was one of the main highlights for this year's Mahashivratri event at the Isha Yoga Center. The show depicts the timeless story of how Adiyogi transmitted the ancient science of Yoga to his seven disciples. The interpretation was commissioned by the Isha Yoga Center to reach out to visitors in a visually immersive manner.
The centre appointed Axis Three Dee Studios to execute the entire project from start to finish, including the complete production of the visuals with CEO Avijit Samajdar taking the role of producer and director.
The technical team also included experts from Dataton and projector manufacturer Epson to ensure that the show performed flawlessly and with maximum impact.
The project included overcoming some unique challenges. Firstly, the Adiyogi statue is built of steel and painted black. The satin finish and highly uneven topography called for some creative thinking by the team at Axis Three Dee Studios.
Avijit Samajdar, CEO of Axis Three Dee Studios, said: “Projection mappings is usually attempted on lighter coloured surfaces that evenly reflect light, unlike in this case, black, which greatly absorbed it. What’s more, the sheen on the surface meant that the proper colours did not appear and the team devised a unique colour palette (Real Time Colour Cancellation process) to counter the interference hues from the shiny surface. Thus, the final amalgam of colours using this process, came out vivid and rich during projection, with unwanted reflective hues cancelled out in real time.”
Another challenge was the sheer scale of the project. The entire surface area to be projected upon was over 8000 square feet. To achieve full image coverage, 24 units of 15,000 lumens laser projectors from Epson, running under Dataton Watchout, were used in a unique stacking configuration.
Samajdar explained: “Due to certain inherent constraints to the locations for the permanent setup of the two projection towers at the site, the projectors were arranged in four stacked sets by the technical team, to ensure maximum optimisation of lumens and angle of incidence of the projected light.”
Ashok Sharma from Dataton elaborated: “Naturally, the centre did not want to have a projection tower built in front of the Adiyogi statue as this could obstruct viewing and visitors. The solution was to build two towers, of limited height, at 45-degree angles. The left tower covers the entire left side of statue and right tower covers the whole right side of the statue.”
The Dataton solutions were chosen due to their strong track-record in the industry as a reliable and versatile tool for cutting-edge mapping applications.