Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I am your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer
Speaker 1: at Cal's stuff Works, and I am a Disney fanatic.
Speaker 1: People who have listened to this show for a long
Speaker 1: time are already aware of that fact. I love Disney,
Speaker 1: I love the Disney movies, I love the Disney Parks.
Speaker 1: I've done episodes about different aspects of the Disney parks,
Speaker 1: and earlier in ten I had planned on going to
Speaker 1: Disney World and uh in twenty seventeen, Disney World over
Speaker 1: at the Magic Kingdom started a brand new fireworks display
Speaker 1: called Happily ever After. And after I heard about it
Speaker 1: and heard what was going to be part of Happily
Speaker 1: ever After, which would include three D projection mapping, I'll
Speaker 1: talk about that this episode. I realized that this was
Speaker 1: a really cool idea. I could use that as a
Speaker 1: specific example and take the opportunity to talk about the
Speaker 1: technologies that make that show possible. So, in the interest
Speaker 1: of full disclosure, I want to let you guys know
Speaker 1: I reached out to Disney and told them what I
Speaker 1: wanted to do and asked if they might be able
Speaker 1: to set up an interview with one of their imagineers
Speaker 1: who was responsible for working on this this project. So
Speaker 1: I did that and I heard back from Disney. They
Speaker 1: were very, very gracious. They informed me that they did
Speaker 1: not have any opportunities for any interviews during the time
Speaker 1: when I was going to be at Disney anyway. I
Speaker 1: told them this, you know, the span of the week
Speaker 1: where I would actually be at the park. However, they
Speaker 1: did give me a one day park hopper pass so
Speaker 1: that I could go I which I used. So I
Speaker 1: just wanted to make that full disclosure because while there
Speaker 1: was no agreement about doing a show or having access
Speaker 1: to anything, it was literally they said, thank you for
Speaker 1: your interest. Here's a day at the park. I just
Speaker 1: want to let you guys know that that had happened,
Speaker 1: because you know, I want to be on the up
Speaker 1: and up. But I had planned on doing the show anyway.
Speaker 1: So yeah, alright, So what that's what is happily ever After? Well,
Speaker 1: it is the successor of a show that was called Wishes. Uh.
Speaker 1: This is the big nighttime show at the Magic Kingdom.
Speaker 1: Wishes was primarily a pyrotechnics show, a fireworks display and
Speaker 1: I was kind of sad to see Wishes go. Wishes
Speaker 1: had been around for I think thirteen years at the
Speaker 1: Magic Kingdom Park and then uh they decided to swap
Speaker 1: it out. I had a personal connection to Wishes because
Speaker 1: Wishes was hosted and I use air quotes for hosted
Speaker 1: by jim NYE. Cricket. The voice of Jiminy Cricket was
Speaker 1: one of the narrators for the show Wishes. And I
Speaker 1: don't want to ruin the magic for anybody, but Jiminy
Speaker 1: Cricket used to be voiced by an actor named Eddie Carroll,
Speaker 1: and Eddie Carroll was a friend of the family. He
Speaker 1: passed away a few years ago, but Eddie Carroll's a
Speaker 1: friend of the Strickland family, and so it was kind
Speaker 1: of sad to see that show go because that was
Speaker 1: another connection to someone I had known and had had
Speaker 1: hung out with. Very nice man. Uh So I was
Speaker 1: sad to see that go, but I was also excited
Speaker 1: because I I don't think anything at Disney should be
Speaker 1: considered as a as a forever and ever permanent kind
Speaker 1: of installment, because then you don't ever have the opportunity
Speaker 1: to experiment and innovate. And I think that Walt Disney
Speaker 1: was very much concerned with the concept of innovation, so
Speaker 1: I am glad that they had the chance to make
Speaker 1: this new show. Fireworks in Disney date back a long way.
Speaker 1: The first fireworks display at a Disney park was at
Speaker 1: Disneyland in nineteen fifty eight. It was called Fantasy in
Speaker 1: the Sky. As I said, Wishes was the most recent
Speaker 1: fireworks display over at the Magic Kingdom until earlier in
Speaker 1: sev It was kind of cool. It had five hundred
Speaker 1: fifty seven firing queues that meant at five fifty seven
Speaker 1: different points during the show they would fire off at
Speaker 1: least one, if not multiple fireworks. H and so it
Speaker 1: was neat to see that show. I hope you had
Speaker 1: a chance to see it. If you've ever been to
Speaker 1: the Magic Kingdom, I hope you had a chance to
Speaker 1: see Wishes. It was pretty good, but happily ever after.
Speaker 1: Has a lot of new technologies involved in it, not
Speaker 1: just fireworks, not just spotlights, not just lasers, but also
Speaker 1: three D projection mapping, which has been used a couple
Speaker 1: of times in Disney's past, including a notable one. The
Speaker 1: first noted use of three D projection mapping was at
Speaker 1: a Disney Park, but this was the first truly major
Speaker 1: use of it in a big Disney show that was
Speaker 1: meant to be a kind of a nightly performance. And
Speaker 1: there's a lot of different breakdowns online you can find
Speaker 1: for the show that kind of explain the flow of it.
Speaker 1: One of them is on w d W Magic. It's
Speaker 1: called Deconstructing Happily. Ever, after it breaks it down like this,
Speaker 1: it says that there are seven sections to the show,
Speaker 1: and the first one is called Desiring the Dream. This
Speaker 1: is their terminology. It's not necessarily the internal one, but
Speaker 1: Desiring the Dream, which sets the scene and features the
Speaker 1: first instances of projection mapping. I'll explain what that means
Speaker 1: a little bit later in this episode. The second section
Speaker 1: is called Boldly Beginning the Journey, and that one has
Speaker 1: some various laser effects along with projection mapping and some fireworks.
Speaker 1: Then you have friends on the Journey. Section four is
Speaker 1: Love is the Journey. Section five is Overcoming Adversity, which
Speaker 1: includes both projected and real fireworks, which is kind of cool.
Speaker 1: They'll have a projected firework on the castle itself and
Speaker 1: then it will transition to a real firework in actual space,
Speaker 1: so you watch as a pretend firework is fired off
Speaker 1: on the scene of the castle and a real one
Speaker 1: takes off right at the same point, so that you
Speaker 1: can then have that perfect transition. It's a really neat effect.
Speaker 1: Section six is the Heroes Happily ever After, and the
Speaker 1: final section is find your Own Happily ever After. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the Disney Wiki has a slightly different naming system for
Speaker 1: these that goes with Happily ever After, wish Adventure, Friendship,
Speaker 1: Love Adversity, Heroes fight Back, Peace Restored, and Happily ever
Speaker 1: After referees. Each section has various effects, characters, music, and
Speaker 1: dialogue associated with it. So let's talk about how how
Speaker 1: all this works. I mean, it's when you experience it
Speaker 1: as a show. You're hearing music, you're hearing dialogue, You're
Speaker 1: seeing the imagery projected directly onto the castle, Cinderella's castle
Speaker 1: at the Magic Kingdom. You're seeing the fireworks, you're seeing
Speaker 1: the spotlights, you're seeing the lasers. How do you coordinate
Speaker 1: all of that? The answer, by the way, spoiler alert,
Speaker 1: is computers. Yeah, that's pretty much what you have to use.
Speaker 1: But obviously there's a lot of different individual components here.
Speaker 1: So let's start with fireworks. So we actually did a
Speaker 1: pair of episodes about fireworks, uh a few years back
Speaker 1: back in tween. This would be when Lauren vogeo Baum
Speaker 1: was my co host, and Lauren and I did these
Speaker 1: two episodes about fireworks. They are titled tech Stuff Lights
Speaker 1: Some Fireworks. That one published on July twenty fourteen, and
Speaker 1: the second part was called Fireworks Part two because apparently
Speaker 1: we ran out of creative ways of naming episodes. That
Speaker 1: one published on jen But I'm gonna go over some
Speaker 1: of the salient facts so that we understand what's happening,
Speaker 1: because I don't need to go in as much detailed
Speaker 1: since we already have episodes. But it's been a few years,
Speaker 1: so let's catch everybody up. First of all, what is
Speaker 1: a firework? Well, it's an explosive or combustible device designed
Speaker 1: to create an impressive light display and or loud noise.
Speaker 1: These days, the most common basic ingredient and fireworks is
Speaker 1: called black powder, which is similar to gunpowder. It's made
Speaker 1: from sulfur, charcoal, and potassium nitrate, also known as saltpeter.
Speaker 1: So those are your three basic ingredients for gunpowder. If
Speaker 1: you remember from The Wonderful musical seventy. That's what Adams
Speaker 1: was asking of his wife Abigail to send them saltpeter
Speaker 1: because they needed it for their guns. Legend states that
Speaker 1: fireworks were created by accident when a chef in China
Speaker 1: was mixing together sulfur, saltpeter, and charcoal in a kitchen
Speaker 1: and discovered that if you compressed it and then lit
Speaker 1: it on fire, it would ignite with explosive force. There's
Speaker 1: no word whether the chefs survived this discovery, or if
Speaker 1: perhaps noodles found their way to the moon. No one
Speaker 1: really knows, and in fact, this is probably an apocryphal story,
Speaker 1: but it is a popular one. Another potentially apocryphal story
Speaker 1: traces the origin of fireworks back to a specific monk
Speaker 1: named Le Sian who lived in China about one thousand
Speaker 1: years ago. But there's so many different sources that use
Speaker 1: the exact same phrasing to describe the story that to me,
Speaker 1: it sounds like they're all working from a a single
Speaker 1: primary source, or they're perpetuating a whole lot of copying
Speaker 1: and pasting. At any rate, it sounds like there's a
Speaker 1: lot of plagiarism is a strong word, let's just say
Speaker 1: very creative writing going on here, and I can't find
Speaker 1: anything that actually confirms or denies that legend. It may
Speaker 1: very well have an element of truth to it, or
Speaker 1: it could be completely baseless, and it's just one of
Speaker 1: those things that's been passed around by multiple people. Scholarly sources, however,
Speaker 1: point to the development of gunpowder originating sometime around the
Speaker 1: eleventh century Common Era in China. Other people worked on
Speaker 1: it as well over the following centuries. Roger Bacon discovered
Speaker 1: in the thirteenth century that black powder burned with a
Speaker 1: quick flash if you lit it. So if you just
Speaker 1: had black powder loose and you lit it, it would
Speaker 1: go flash and just be gone. But if you were
Speaker 1: to compress it by packing it into a container and
Speaker 1: then you lit it, it would explode and go boom.
Speaker 1: And that's because you have the basic needs for fire
Speaker 1: in very high concentration in a small area. Uh. That
Speaker 1: means that means you've got fuel. Fuel in this case
Speaker 1: is the in the form of charcoal and sulfur, and
Speaker 1: you have oxidizer that would be the potassium nitrate. Oxidizer
Speaker 1: are the thing that allows fuel to burn. The one
Speaker 1: we're really familiar with is oxygen, thus the name you
Speaker 1: may remember the triangle that's required to have fire. You
Speaker 1: need fuel, heat, and oxygen. Technically, you don't really need oxygen.
Speaker 1: You need an oxidizer. Oxygen just happens to be one
Speaker 1: of the oxidizers. It's the most plentiful one around us
Speaker 1: on normal day to day basis. Pretty much when it's
Speaker 1: not around us, we tend to not enjoy ourselves so much,
Speaker 1: so we're really familiar with that one. Modern fireworks tend
Speaker 1: to use other stuff as oxidizers. Uh Like you know,
Speaker 1: potassium nitrate was very popular for a while, but it's
Speaker 1: not used as much these days. It's not as environmentally
Speaker 1: friendly as some other oxidizers. It creates byproducts that could
Speaker 1: potentially be harmful to say, surrounding wildlife or people, So
Speaker 1: potassium nitrate is not used as frequently in modern fireworks.
Speaker 1: We're seeing more stuff like sodium and potassium pair your
Speaker 1: date being used instead or pariah date, I guess is
Speaker 1: the best way of saying it. Pariah date, not perio date.
Speaker 1: Don't write to me, I know and messed it up.
Speaker 1: The colors created from fireworks are dependent upon the materials
Speaker 1: that you place inside those fireworks. Because different stuff burns
Speaker 1: with different color flames. We've learned this over centuries where
Speaker 1: people have worked with various materials, they've caught on fire
Speaker 1: and we've looked at the flames and said, oh, that's pretty.
Speaker 1: So if you want to have different effects with your fireworks,
Speaker 1: you would add different types of metallic salts, that kind
Speaker 1: of thing to your mixture in order to create the
Speaker 1: sparking effect that you want. So here's a quick guide
Speaker 1: to some of your basic colors. If you wanted red fireworks,
Speaker 1: you would generate that by burning strontium salts, lithium salts,
Speaker 1: lithium carbonate, strontium carbonate, which would give you a very
Speaker 1: bright red. Strontium carbonate would So those are your reds.
Speaker 1: If you wanted to create orange, you would use calcium
Speaker 1: salts or calcium chloride. If you wanted yellow, you'd use
Speaker 1: sodium salts like sodium chloride. If you wanted green, you
Speaker 1: would go with barium compounds and a chlorine producer, so
Speaker 1: barium chloride. If you want blue, you would go with
Speaker 1: copper compounds and a chlorine producer, so copper chloride. You
Speaker 1: want purple, then you would want to mix blue and
Speaker 1: red together. It's kind of like grade school. And that
Speaker 1: meant that you would mix together strawntium and copper. Typically,
Speaker 1: if you wanted silver effects, you would use something like aluminum,
Speaker 1: titanium or magnesium in there to get the explosive patterns.
Speaker 1: Because that all that does is just give you color.
Speaker 1: It doesn't automatically make the fireworks spread out in a
Speaker 1: particular shape. If you want a specific shape, you would
Speaker 1: have to pour them these metallic salts into lumps made
Speaker 1: of clay or a kind of Doughey material. These would
Speaker 1: end up being pocket of that material, and they're about
Speaker 1: three or four centimeters across, and in the industry they
Speaker 1: refer to these things as stars. So each one's three
Speaker 1: or four centimeters across. You might have a whole bunch
Speaker 1: in a single firework, but each one of these would
Speaker 1: represent a blast of color like one of those big
Speaker 1: sparks you see in fireworks. So you're talking about lots
Speaker 1: and lots of them in the really big ones. And uh,
Speaker 1: the way you place them inside the firework determines where
Speaker 1: they're going to go, just based upon where the blast
Speaker 1: is right, You've got a essentially a black powder core
Speaker 1: that's going to force everything into different directions, and you
Speaker 1: place the stars around the core in the particular uh,
Speaker 1: the particular arrangement you want in order to create the
Speaker 1: effect you're going for. It's pretty cool that you can
Speaker 1: do this, you know, manually, if you wanted to. In fact,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of places that still do this
Speaker 1: manually because frankly, you're you're working with stuff that's pretty dangerous,
Speaker 1: so you want to be really careful with it. You can't,
Speaker 1: you know, you can't treat black powder casually or you're
Speaker 1: gonna have an explosion on your hands. Now, typical firework
Speaker 1: rocket will have several stars packed into it, and like
Speaker 1: I said, they had to be placed meticulously in the
Speaker 1: rocket to get that desired effect. And then they use
Speaker 1: a time delay fuse that would lead to the burst
Speaker 1: chamber of black powder, which the stars are centered around.
Speaker 1: So you typically have two different kinds of fuses in
Speaker 1: your firework. You have a quick burning fuse that will
Speaker 1: go to the uh the launch blast of black powder.
Speaker 1: You can think of a firework is having two chambers,
Speaker 1: the first one being the launch chamber. That's what's going
Speaker 1: to provide the force necessary to propel the firework into
Speaker 1: the air. Disney is a little different, but we'll talk
Speaker 1: about that in a second. So your typical firework, you
Speaker 1: would have that first black powder bunch that shoots the
Speaker 1: firework into the air. The fuse would then lead to
Speaker 1: a more slow burning fuse, And by slow we're talking
Speaker 1: about degrees here. It's not like it's super slow, but
Speaker 1: it would burn slower so that the secondary charge, the
Speaker 1: burst charge, will explode at a precise timing, typically when
Speaker 1: you want to get to the the top of the
Speaker 1: arc of the fireworks flight. So you time this out
Speaker 1: by measuring out how much black powder you're using. This
Speaker 1: is all based upon also the weight of the firework.
Speaker 1: When it's all finished, like, you have to do a
Speaker 1: lot of math. You have to figure out how heavy
Speaker 1: is the firework, how much force is the blast powder
Speaker 1: going to create when it's doing this lift, how fast
Speaker 1: will it get to the top of its flight path,
Speaker 1: and how long does the slow burning fuse have to
Speaker 1: be in order for the burst black powder to ignite
Speaker 1: at the proper time to ignite all those stars and
Speaker 1: send them out in the various directions. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of math involved often that that's just for one firework. Also,
Speaker 1: you've got to remember, based upon the way you design
Speaker 1: the firework, you're gonna get very different effects. Obviously, if
Speaker 1: you've seen any fireworks displays, you've probably seen somewhere it's
Speaker 1: just a very bright star flying through the sky, or
Speaker 1: another one where it's a really cool kind of uh
Speaker 1: cascade effect. All of these are based upon the way
Speaker 1: that you've actually packed the powder and the stars together,
Speaker 1: so really precise. And it's fascinating to me that we
Speaker 1: ever figured this stuff out because I look at it
Speaker 1: and I think it's so pretty how much trial and
Speaker 1: error was necessary to understand exactly how to do this correctly?
Speaker 1: Would I have had the patients to do it, or
Speaker 1: would I be known as Johnny the three fingered idiot
Speaker 1: who probably worked a little too closely with black powder.
Speaker 1: I think we all know the answer to that, so
Speaker 1: you don't need to write me and tell me. I
Speaker 1: know what the answer is. So let's just be thankful
Speaker 1: that people who are smarter than I am were the
Speaker 1: ones who developed fireworks. Now, more advanced fireworks may have
Speaker 1: multiple burst chambers, so not just the one, they might
Speaker 1: have multiple ones so that you get extra effects from
Speaker 1: the same firework. You don't have to fire multiple ones
Speaker 1: to get it, and you might have different break charges
Speaker 1: in between these different chambers, so that you can have
Speaker 1: them ignite at different points of the flight, and therefore
Speaker 1: you get very different effects as a result. The shape
Speaker 1: of the firework bursts is determined by the arrangement of
Speaker 1: the stars inside the projectile and whether or not it
Speaker 1: is a multi break firework. The shape of the shells
Speaker 1: also determines the shape of the explosion, and here is
Speaker 1: a collection of your basic types of fireworks. Shells. You've
Speaker 1: got palm which contains large comets or charges in the
Speaker 1: shape of a solid cylinder that travel outward, explode and
Speaker 1: then curved downward like the limbs of a palm tree.
Speaker 1: You have round shells. These explode and spherical shape, usually
Speaker 1: of colored stars, so very typical firework that you would see.
Speaker 1: A ring shell explodes to produce a symmetrical ring of stars.
Speaker 1: Another very typical firework willow. This contains stars. High charcoal
Speaker 1: composition makes them burn longer that fall into the shape
Speaker 1: of willow branches and may even stay visible until they
Speaker 1: hit the ground. So this is that cascading effect I
Speaker 1: was talking about a second ago. Round dell shells. These
Speaker 1: burst into a circle of maroon shells that explode in sequence.
Speaker 1: Chrysanthemum shells. These burst into a spherical pattern of stars
Speaker 1: that leave a visible trail with an effect somewhat suggestive
Speaker 1: of the flower pistol shells like a chrysanthemum shell, but
Speaker 1: has a core that is a different color from the
Speaker 1: outer stars. So you get a contrast maroon shell which
Speaker 1: makes allowed bang and serpentine bursts to send small tubes
Speaker 1: of incendiaries skittering outward in random paths, which may culminate
Speaker 1: in exploding stars. Obviously, these are all basic types of fireworks.
Speaker 1: There are others, and there are combinations of these as well.
Speaker 1: Like I said, fireworks have the two chambers, you've got
Speaker 1: the different fuses that will allow those different chambers to
Speaker 1: ignite at different points of the flight. To me, it's
Speaker 1: a very low tech but elegant solution to making an
Speaker 1: explosion happen exactly when you want it to and to
Speaker 1: get the effect that you're hoping for. And typically you
Speaker 1: would launch fireworks, these big ones anyway, from mortars and
Speaker 1: a mortar firework mortar typically it's just a tube that
Speaker 1: has one end sealed off, so the base of the
Speaker 1: firework goes down against the bottom of the tube, you
Speaker 1: light it, use the tube to aim the firework at
Speaker 1: the right angle, flies out the end, and shoots off
Speaker 1: preferably exactly where you want it to, and then it
Speaker 1: blows up. Pretty simple design. Some mortars have sparkers at
Speaker 1: the base of them, and those are hooked up to
Speaker 1: a control board which could also be hooked up to
Speaker 1: a computer program, so the computer program can send a
Speaker 1: command that will send a electric current down the wire,
Speaker 1: sparking the sparker, which then ignites the fuse for the
Speaker 1: firework and fires it off. If you have a computer
Speaker 1: program that has everything coordinated in it, then you just
Speaker 1: run the program. As long as all the fireworks are
Speaker 1: set up ahead of time, then it should work pretty
Speaker 1: well and you will have your fireworks going off at
Speaker 1: the appropriate time. If you wanted to actually time this
Speaker 1: out properly, then you kind of have to work backwards.
Speaker 1: You have to figure out what point in the show
Speaker 1: you want something to happen, and you mark down the
Speaker 1: time stamp. So you start the show, you have a
Speaker 1: moment in the show and you say this is when
Speaker 1: I want the firework to go off. You mark the
Speaker 1: time stamp down and you start working backwards. So you
Speaker 1: take the firework that you're planning on firing and you say,
Speaker 1: all right, well I need it to explode at this point,
Speaker 1: So that's the explosion point. How long does it take
Speaker 1: for the quick fuse to burn to the or the
Speaker 1: slow fuse to burn to the burst chamber? How long
Speaker 1: does that take? Based upon that, we know know how
Speaker 1: long back how far back we need to go for
Speaker 1: the birst chamber to light Based on that, you can say,
Speaker 1: all right, well, how far does the lift chamber need
Speaker 1: to uh? When does that need to light up in
Speaker 1: order for the burst chamber to be in the right
Speaker 1: position at the right time. So you just keep working backward,
Speaker 1: and as you do that, you start to finally get
Speaker 1: to the point where you say, this is the moment
Speaker 1: in the show where I have to launch so that
Speaker 1: at this later moment I get the effect I want.
Speaker 1: And as long as you're being very consistent with the
Speaker 1: way you're producing your fireworks, you should get the same
Speaker 1: effect more or less every show. There might be small
Speaker 1: changes based on weather and some other things that are
Speaker 1: kind of outside your control. There're gonna be some small
Speaker 1: change differences in quality, for example, with fireworks. But for
Speaker 1: the most part, you're gonna be pretty consistent because physics
Speaker 1: is like that. If physics were not like that, we
Speaker 1: wouldn't have physics, because you have to have the world
Speaker 1: makes sense in order for us to be able to
Speaker 1: talk about rules. If the world didn't make sense, then
Speaker 1: fireworks would be even more dangerous than they already are. Disney,
Speaker 1: as I mentioned, it is slightly different from this typical
Speaker 1: mortar approach. They don't they don't use mortars with sparkers.
Speaker 1: They typically use mortars that have air compressor guns in them,
Speaker 1: so they can actually use compressed air to fire a
Speaker 1: firework into the sky. Now, what that means is that
Speaker 1: their fireworks don't require this lift chamber of black powder
Speaker 1: because the lift is created from the burst of compressed
Speaker 1: air behind the firework, So they can actually cut down
Speaker 1: on the amount of black powder they need to use
Speaker 1: for each rocket that's in their show. That also means
Speaker 1: that they cut down on the amount of smoke they
Speaker 1: generate per fireworks show because they're not burning as much
Speaker 1: black powder. So there is a practical, uh side effect
Speaker 1: to this. Besides the fact that you know they can
Speaker 1: use compressed air to to get fireworks into motion and
Speaker 1: into into the right place before they explode. Now I've
Speaker 1: got a lot more to talk about with the various
Speaker 1: technologies that are used and happily ever after. But before
Speaker 1: I get into that, let's take a quick break to
Speaker 1: thank our sponsor. All Right, so we've covered fireworks, but
Speaker 1: there are other elements too happily ever after that we
Speaker 1: need to talk about, and another one would be laser lights.
Speaker 1: We covered lasers in an even more recent episode of
Speaker 1: tech Stuff than we did fireworks. That episode was Pew
Speaker 1: Pew Lasers, which published on June four, so super recent.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna go into any real big detail with
Speaker 1: lasers because of that, but I'm gonna give you a
Speaker 1: little bit of an overview just in case you for gotten,
Speaker 1: and that way you don't have to necessarily go and
Speaker 1: dig up that old episode to really get a full
Speaker 1: appreciation of the technology that is making the show happen.
Speaker 1: Laser used to just be an acronym, right, but now
Speaker 1: it is a a noun all on its own. We're
Speaker 1: so proud of this word that it's now achieved true
Speaker 1: noun status. The acronym stands for light amplification by stimulated
Speaker 1: emission of radiation, which sounds naughty, but it's not. It
Speaker 1: just means that you're using energy to stimulate the electrons
Speaker 1: that are in orbit around certain atom nuclei, which when
Speaker 1: you put it that way, doesn't sound nearly as exciting.
Speaker 1: Lasers are monochromatic, which means they produce one wavelength of
Speaker 1: light and thus one specific color because the wavelength of
Speaker 1: light it directly corresponds to the color of light. This
Speaker 1: is true both in the visible spectrum and outside of it,
Speaker 1: but obviously outside of the visible spectrum, it really isn't
Speaker 1: something we can perceive. You can have infrared lasers, but
Speaker 1: you wouldn't be able to see them, But anything that's
Speaker 1: in the visible spectrum, obviously the wavelength would have to
Speaker 1: be a specific length in order for us to perceive it.
Speaker 1: Um that type of light really depends upon the amount
Speaker 1: of energy that the electrons are releasing during the lazing process.
Speaker 1: That in turn is dependent upon the material you're using
Speaker 1: in order to have your lasing medium. So you choose
Speaker 1: your lasing medium that will do that will determine exactly
Speaker 1: how much energy you have to pour into the medium
Speaker 1: to excite the electrons. When the electrons emit that excess
Speaker 1: energy when they want to return to their ground state,
Speaker 1: which I'll talk about in just a second, that will
Speaker 1: end up taking the form of photons, and the photons
Speaker 1: will be of the wavelength the actual light will be
Speaker 1: of the wavelength that is dependent upon uh that lasing medium, right,
Speaker 1: So it all comes down to your choice of materials.
Speaker 1: That tells you how much power you have to put
Speaker 1: into it in order to stimulate the electrons, and thus
Speaker 1: what color of light you're going to get out of it.
Speaker 1: At the end of it, all the light waves that
Speaker 1: come out of a laser are in phase with one another.
Speaker 1: That means they all crest and descend in their wave
Speaker 1: patterns the same way, which also means you can pack
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of light waves together really tightly. Think
Speaker 1: about like putting together some curved pieces of track from
Speaker 1: a railroad set, and you have a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: curves that are the same grade, so they're all of
Speaker 1: the of the same same gentle curve to the right,
Speaker 1: let's say, and you've got a stack of them, Well,
Speaker 1: they stack together really nicely because they all take the
Speaker 1: same shape. This is the same idea, but because you
Speaker 1: have all of these light waves in phase with one another.
Speaker 1: You can pack them together very tightly, they don't jumble up,
Speaker 1: and that's how you get coherence. That's how you get
Speaker 1: a coherent laser. That's what we call that. To get
Speaker 1: a little more granular, atoms have electrons that orbit the
Speaker 1: nuclei of the atom. That's of course the protons and
Speaker 1: or well protons and possibly neutrons. You gotta have a
Speaker 1: proton there, but you may or may not have a
Speaker 1: neutron there, depending upon the actual atom in question. The
Speaker 1: electrons orbit these nuclei at a particular distance or really
Speaker 1: a particular potential range from the nuclei. We tend to
Speaker 1: draw it in very simplistic terms. The reality is a
Speaker 1: bit more messy. But we talk about electron shells, these
Speaker 1: energy shells that electrons will inhabit, and each energy shell
Speaker 1: has a certain number of vacancies available, and electrons will
Speaker 1: take on the vacancy that is closest to the nuclei,
Speaker 1: and then other electrons will take the next closest once
Speaker 1: an entire shell fills up. Well, if you pour energy
Speaker 1: into an atom, that energy will then transfer over to
Speaker 1: the electrons and the ones that are on the outermost
Speaker 1: shell can be excited so that they jump out even
Speaker 1: further away from the nucleus. Once that energy that you're
Speaker 1: using to energize the electrons goes away, the electrons will
Speaker 1: try and return to their ground state, that outer electron
Speaker 1: shell that they normally would be in if they had
Speaker 1: not just been boosted further out. As they do, so
Speaker 1: they have to give up that excess energy they've picked up.
Speaker 1: Otherwise they're just too they're just too darn Swoll for
Speaker 1: that energy shell, and you can't have a Swoll electron there,
Speaker 1: so they have to give up that energy. They do
Speaker 1: that in the form of photons. So again the type
Speaker 1: of material you're using determines how much energy you're poor
Speaker 1: ng in, and that in turn determines the type of
Speaker 1: photon the wavelength of light that will be emitted when
Speaker 1: the electron comes back down to its ground state. Uh
Speaker 1: So that that kind of gives you the overview of
Speaker 1: how lasers work in a very general sense. There's also
Speaker 1: obviously a lot of other elements. You have to have
Speaker 1: a power source, you have to have a lens of
Speaker 1: some sort. Typically there's some interesting mirrors there. The lazing
Speaker 1: system tends to involve a chamber that has UH mirrors
Speaker 1: on either end of the chamber, one of which is
Speaker 1: only partially silvered, so that you can have the lasers
Speaker 1: continuously stimulate the lasing medium and thus emit more laser
Speaker 1: light until it can escape out of the partially silvered
Speaker 1: part of the chamber. It's pretty cool, Like you start
Speaker 1: looking into it and you realize, yeah, I understand why
Speaker 1: James Bond villains really considered the laser a go to
Speaker 1: doomsday device, because these are pretty interesting things here. The
Speaker 1: lasing medium itself kind of acts as an amplifier for
Speaker 1: laser lights, so again a very important component for your laser,
Speaker 1: and two different things, two different factors really determine how
Speaker 1: well laser light shows up at any given time. Those
Speaker 1: two things would be the wavelength of the light itself,
Speaker 1: so where in the spectrum does it fall, and how
Speaker 1: much power was put into the laser. So if we're
Speaker 1: talking about just the visible spectrum, since anything outside of
Speaker 1: that really doesn't matter because we can't see it. Uh,
Speaker 1: the wavelength we would wind is around five nanometers. That's
Speaker 1: ideal for brightness and it produces a green laser. So
Speaker 1: if you're wondering why so many laser pointers were green
Speaker 1: for the longest time. It's because that one shows up really,
Speaker 1: really well with relatively low amounts of power. You don't
Speaker 1: need to pour a lot of energy in in order
Speaker 1: to get a nice visible laser beam. But if you
Speaker 1: wanted other colors, you could get them, but it might
Speaker 1: require you to pour more energy into it, which means
Speaker 1: you might need a bigger battery, or it might drain
Speaker 1: batteries faster. Uh, there are other considerations you have to
Speaker 1: make so you can make lasers of all different types
Speaker 1: of colors. It just requires a lot more energy, and
Speaker 1: if you pour enough energy in to a laser, it
Speaker 1: becomes hazardous. Right. A little bit of power can go
Speaker 1: a long way with certain wavelengths, but with others. If
Speaker 1: you're pouring a lot of energy in, you can have
Speaker 1: enough energy there for the laser to do some damage
Speaker 1: when it comes into contact with something else, like like
Speaker 1: your hand or your eyeball. So lasers can be particularly
Speaker 1: dangerous once you start getting up there in power. I
Speaker 1: mean they can be dangerous even at low power, but
Speaker 1: the higher power you go, the more dangerous they can be.
Speaker 1: And in fact, you can buy lasers at ridiculously powerful
Speaker 1: levels just online. If you into some of them strong
Speaker 1: enough to do things like, uh, produce a beam that's
Speaker 1: concentrated and hot enough to light a match, or pop
Speaker 1: a balloon, or burn a hole through a thin piece
Speaker 1: of wood. That kind of thing. It buyer beware, it's
Speaker 1: dangerous stuff. But anyway, Disney uses lasers not to burn
Speaker 1: through the castle because that would be incredibly expensive they'd
Speaker 1: have to replace it every day, but rather to create
Speaker 1: embellishments in their show. So if you watch Happily ever After,
Speaker 1: and there are, by the way, videos online where you
Speaker 1: can watch the whole show from beginning to end. Disney
Speaker 1: in fact live stream the very first Happily ever After,
Speaker 1: and I believe the video from that live stream is
Speaker 1: still available online. So you can watch that first one.
Speaker 1: You'll see the moments where the lasers come in and
Speaker 1: they will appear to draw on the castle, and the
Speaker 1: projection mapping, which we'll talk about next, follows along, so
Speaker 1: that you have what looks like a laser pint brush
Speaker 1: and it looks like it's actually making the castle change color. Again,
Speaker 1: that's all part of the projection mapping. It's all timed
Speaker 1: out very precisely. So all of these lasers have to
Speaker 1: be computer controlled, and they're all controlled from their various stations.
Speaker 1: They're all on gimbals that are motorized so that they
Speaker 1: can be pointed in the very specific direction they need
Speaker 1: to be in at the angle they need, and they
Speaker 1: can all be controlled simultaneously through the computer process. So
Speaker 1: it's all been programmed so that every single motion is
Speaker 1: precise and the lasers are all going exactly where they
Speaker 1: need to be. Now, that's obviously very challenging for a
Speaker 1: human being to do. If I were holding a laser pointer,
Speaker 1: the further away I am from my target, the more
Speaker 1: dramatic any movement I make is going to be. At
Speaker 1: the far end of it. Right, you can just imagine
Speaker 1: if you have a laser that's pointing at a castle
Speaker 1: that's a hundred and fifty two feet away, tiny little
Speaker 1: motions on your end are going to be translated into
Speaker 1: giant ones across against the castle. Even though it's a
Speaker 1: small beam of light, you'll see it move in dramatic
Speaker 1: ways just with tying little motions. So all of this
Speaker 1: has to be controlled by machine. All has to be automated,
Speaker 1: and you program it very precisely in a computer. Now,
Speaker 1: the computer model has to understand and I used to
Speaker 1: understand loosely here, but it has to understand the dimensions
Speaker 1: of the canvas you're painting against. In this case, it
Speaker 1: would be the Cinderella's Castle at Magic Kingdom and Walt
Speaker 1: Disney World. And by knowing that, it knows how precisely
Speaker 1: to move the laser pointer so that it will create
Speaker 1: the effect specifically where it needs to go, and it
Speaker 1: can make very smooth and consistent motions. That's the other
Speaker 1: important thing for any show of this nature, you consistency.
Speaker 1: So you want the show tonight to be just as
Speaker 1: good as the show that was last night, and you
Speaker 1: want tomorrow's show to be just as good as the
Speaker 1: last two. So you want to make sure everything is
Speaker 1: as controlled as it possibly can be, knowing that there
Speaker 1: are certain elements that are going to be outside of
Speaker 1: your control, things like weather conditions. That's not something you
Speaker 1: can really have a say over. So that can that
Speaker 1: covers the lasers, and there are all sorts of different
Speaker 1: colors of lasers that are used in this one. I
Speaker 1: want to say that there are yellow ones or gold
Speaker 1: ones that are part of Happily ever after. But there
Speaker 1: are different colors as well, and those come into various
Speaker 1: points of the quote unquote story of the show. There's
Speaker 1: kind of a loose story. It's more like a little
Speaker 1: vignettes that happened throughout the the experience rather than a
Speaker 1: traditional narrative. But that's that technology. Now let's move on
Speaker 1: to projection mapping, which I'm really excited to talk about
Speaker 1: because projection mapping is one of those things I just
Speaker 1: think is super cool. There are tons and tons of
Speaker 1: videos online showing what projection mapping is, and if you
Speaker 1: see some of the better ones, the effects are really
Speaker 1: breathtaking because they're very convincing from the proper angle. But
Speaker 1: you have to have conditions just right. You need the
Speaker 1: lighting to be just right so that the projection you're
Speaker 1: looking at doesn't get ruined by a lot of ambient light.
Speaker 1: The more ambient light you have, the more you can
Speaker 1: see the the object that's behind the projection. The less
Speaker 1: uh immersive the experience will be, or the less convincing
Speaker 1: the experience will be. But if you're wondering what projection
Speaker 1: mapping is, since I haven't really defined it, it is
Speaker 1: the display of an image on a non flat or
Speaker 1: non white surface. So in other words, it's like projecting
Speaker 1: onto a film screen, only anything could be a film screen.
Speaker 1: Any three dimensional object could, in theory, be your film screen.
Speaker 1: The technique has been used for a few years to
Speaker 1: great effect at various concerts and celebrations. If you've ever
Speaker 1: seen one in person, you know how dramatic the effects
Speaker 1: can be. With the right lighting and projection. As I
Speaker 1: was mentioning earlier, you can make a building seemed to
Speaker 1: come alive, or to fall apart, or turn into a
Speaker 1: giant puzzle. Uh. There are a lot of different videos
Speaker 1: on YouTube. Just go and look up projection mapping. You're
Speaker 1: gonna see some incredible stuff. Projection mapping has also been
Speaker 1: called spatial augmented reality, because you are augmenting reality with
Speaker 1: a overlay of information, in this case, projected information. Most
Speaker 1: of the time we think of augmented reality as some
Speaker 1: sort of headset we're wearing where we've got display in
Speaker 1: front of us, and we're looking at a video feed
Speaker 1: of the world around us, not really the real world.
Speaker 1: We're looking at it through the camera lens, so we're
Speaker 1: looking at kind of a monitor, and then we have
Speaker 1: digital information overlaid on top of that display, and that
Speaker 1: gives us that augmented reality. This is a differ or
Speaker 1: an approach to augmented reality. It is just as legitimate.
Speaker 1: It is where you are directly projecting onto reality reality itself,
Speaker 1: so rather than having a screen in front of you,
Speaker 1: you're looking at the world. It's just that the world
Speaker 1: also happens to have something projected on top of it
Speaker 1: that augments the experience, which is kind of cool that
Speaker 1: it allows you to to make the definition a little
Speaker 1: more broad when it comes to augmented reality. It's also
Speaker 1: been known as video mapping, and Disney, as it turns out,
Speaker 1: has a really long history with it. Disney has perhaps
Speaker 1: the first implementation of projection mapping, and that would date
Speaker 1: all the way back to nineteen sixty nine and a
Speaker 1: little part called Disneyland, California. Disneyland in nineteen sixty nine
Speaker 1: opened up a brand new attraction that brand new attractions.
Speaker 1: Probably it's definitely in my top three. It is the
Speaker 1: Haunted Mansion, uh, a ride that is also beloved by
Speaker 1: Holly Fry here at How Stuff Works. Holly is a
Speaker 1: huge Disney fan and she loves the Haunted Mansion as well.
Speaker 1: For a good reason it's a fantastic ride, and the
Speaker 1: attraction used a lot of different cool lighting and special effects,
Speaker 1: including the amazing Pepper's Ghost effect, which we've talked about
Speaker 1: on a previous episode of tech Stuff. In fact, I
Speaker 1: think I did a full episode of tech Stuff just
Speaker 1: on the Haunted Mansion several years ago. But the effect
Speaker 1: I want to talk about here is one that involves
Speaker 1: five sculptures, five busts. There are five bust sculptures that
Speaker 1: are in the graveyard sequence of the Haunted Mansion, and
Speaker 1: they are of five figures that are singing the song
Speaker 1: Grim Grinning Ghosts, and um, it's actually the singers. That's
Speaker 1: their faces that are projected onto these busts. Of the
Speaker 1: bus themselves are plain white figures that are designed in
Speaker 1: the shape of the heads of those singers. But then
Speaker 1: the singers were shot on film singing along to this song,
Speaker 1: Grim Grinning Ghosts. That footage is then projected on top
Speaker 1: of these static sculptures, So the sculptures have no moving parts.
Speaker 1: Their mouths are not moving, the eyes are not opening
Speaker 1: and closing, there's no articulation whatsoever. That effect is completely
Speaker 1: generated by the projection that's on top of the sculptures.
Speaker 1: And this was again back in nine, so very forward
Speaker 1: thinking when it comes down to the effects you would
Speaker 1: want for your amusement park. Uh. And it's a really
Speaker 1: early example of projection mapping, perhaps the first one, although
Speaker 1: I don't have any confirming evidence to say so. Uh.
Speaker 1: You have to have the projector lined up precisely with
Speaker 1: the object. It has to be uh calor braided exactly
Speaker 1: so that you can get this effect properly. If it
Speaker 1: weren't done so, then the images of the face would
Speaker 1: not line up with the actual carved face of the sculpture.
Speaker 1: Think of it in terms of a movie screen. If
Speaker 1: you have a movie screen and the projector was off kilter,
Speaker 1: then the picture you're looking at would not line up
Speaker 1: with the screen and things would look strange. You may
Speaker 1: have even seen this, Maybe you've gone to a film
Speaker 1: where the projectionist had not corrected for it properly, and
Speaker 1: the the view of the film was a little too
Speaker 1: low or a little too high. It's little too low.
Speaker 1: Then you might see stuff like boom mix that are
Speaker 1: not actually cut out of the shot. They are just
Speaker 1: typically out of view because the projectionist lines up the
Speaker 1: film in such a way. That you would not see it. Typically,
Speaker 1: same sort of thing is true with projection mapping, but
Speaker 1: to a much greater degree. You have to be very
Speaker 1: precise with how the projection line up with the third
Speaker 1: three dimensional object that it is hitting. Disney actually received
Speaker 1: a patent in ninete about projection mapping. The patents title
Speaker 1: is Apparatus Method for Projection upon a three Dimensional Object,
Speaker 1: which again was pretty much projection mapping. And from that
Speaker 1: patent is the following statement, which really sums up the
Speaker 1: challenges that you face if you want to create this effect.
Speaker 1: The projection of an image onto a three dimensional object
Speaker 1: having various contours and shapes is not an easy task.
Speaker 1: It is generally known that the correction of all optical
Speaker 1: distortion problems inherent in flat two dimensional image projection is
Speaker 1: especially difficult when working with three dimensional projection surfaces. These
Speaker 1: problems include proper image registration on the object, proper keystoning
Speaker 1: corrections to ensure appropriate perspective appearances, and focusing of the
Speaker 1: image within a specified range of depth. So what that's
Speaker 1: saying is, when you've got a distorted screen, which is
Speaker 1: essentially what a three dimensional object would be, you can't
Speaker 1: just easily map a two dimensional image on top of it.
Speaker 1: It's It's kind of like if you grabbed a paper
Speaker 1: map and try to lay it down on top of
Speaker 1: a globe. While the paper map has been designed in
Speaker 1: such a way to mimic the Earth, but obviously lots
Speaker 1: of different considerations had to be taken into effect to
Speaker 1: make that happen. When you are trying to convert a
Speaker 1: three dimensional object into a two dimensional rendering, you have
Speaker 1: to make some sacrifices. You can't just slap the map
Speaker 1: back onto a globe and have it look perfect. It's
Speaker 1: not going to You have to You would have to
Speaker 1: warp things within the image in order to have it
Speaker 1: line up properly so that it would look the way
Speaker 1: it should on a globe. The same thing is true
Speaker 1: with projection mapping. You actually have to warp the image
Speaker 1: so that when it's overlaid on top of the three
Speaker 1: dimensional object, you get the effect. Do you one. Now
Speaker 1: I'm gonna talk a lot more about projection mapping, but
Speaker 1: first let's take another quick break to thank our sponsor.
Speaker 1: Let's talk a little bit about the concept of spatial
Speaker 1: augmented reality. I mentioned I mentioned earlier that's sort of
Speaker 1: the academic name for what is projection mapping. This became
Speaker 1: an area of study really in the late nineteen nineties.
Speaker 1: So even though Disney had pioneered some of this work
Speaker 1: in the late nineteen sixties, it wasn't until the nineteen
Speaker 1: nineties that a lot of work was being done on it, because, again,
Speaker 1: to do it on a big scale was really tricky
Speaker 1: unless you started taking a computer science approach, and that's
Speaker 1: exactly what was going on in the nineties. That was
Speaker 1: largely the domain of a group of researchers who are
Speaker 1: working at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. They
Speaker 1: wrote a paper called the Office of the Future, and
Speaker 1: in that paper they imagined an office that would have
Speaker 1: lots of projectors everywhere, and the projectors would allow you
Speaker 1: to turn work spaces into all sorts of different augmented experiences. So,
Speaker 1: for example, let's say that you're working on a collaborative project,
Speaker 1: you might use all these different projectors to allow you
Speaker 1: to work uh interactively in an environment that would let
Speaker 1: you visualize exactly what you're talking about, even if what
Speaker 1: you normally would use just spreadsheets. So it's kind of
Speaker 1: a cool idea, but very heavily relied upon this idea
Speaker 1: of projection mapping. One of the people working on that
Speaker 1: was Ramesh Rascar is one of that University of North
Speaker 1: Carolina group, and he also worked on a tech that
Speaker 1: he called shader lamps. Shader lamps would allow you, through
Speaker 1: projection to create different effects on stationary three dimensional objects,
Speaker 1: as if you were using a digital canvas. So you
Speaker 1: might think of shaders on graphics, you know, Shaders are
Speaker 1: things that allow you to work with light in different ways.
Speaker 1: That was the purpose of shader lamps to create light
Speaker 1: in specific ways to protect against three dimensional objects and
Speaker 1: then create the different effects that you want. And there's
Speaker 1: actually a really cool video that I watched where he
Speaker 1: walked through this process and he showed a neutral colored vause.
Speaker 1: The vase was sort of an off white color, is
Speaker 1: just plain, no texture, no pattern on it, and projected
Speaker 1: different images onto it so that it had a pattern
Speaker 1: or it appeared to have texture. The one that I
Speaker 1: really liked was one where it was a very convincing
Speaker 1: illusion that there was a patterned vase rotating perhaps on
Speaker 1: like a lazy Susan, But it turned out the vase
Speaker 1: was completely stationary. It was not rotating at all, it
Speaker 1: was just a solid color vase. It was the image
Speaker 1: that was making it look like it was rotating. It's
Speaker 1: the same basic principle that we have for film. We're
Speaker 1: watching a series of images that, when they are played
Speaker 1: back at a certain frequency, appear to simulate movement. Same
Speaker 1: thing is true with projection mapping, but it required that
Speaker 1: you have this approach where you are conforming the image
Speaker 1: projected to the object shape and size. So it's a
Speaker 1: little more tricky. It's not just well, let's move the
Speaker 1: projector a little bit closer to the screen or a
Speaker 1: little further away from the screen because the image that's
Speaker 1: being shown is too big or too small. It also
Speaker 1: involves the actual contours of the device you're or the
Speaker 1: the object you're using. And he pointed out the two
Speaker 1: main problems of projection mapping are aligning each individual projector
Speaker 1: so that the images they display line up with the
Speaker 1: physical features of the three dimensional object itself. So, for example,
Speaker 1: corners or in the case of Cinderella's Castle at Disney,
Speaker 1: you've got the different parapets, you've got the different doors
Speaker 1: and windows. All of that has to line up icily
Speaker 1: with the the projection or else you're gonna have this
Speaker 1: weird overlay effect where the image is not quite on
Speaker 1: top of the physical part of the castle it's supposed
Speaker 1: to be laid against. So that's one of the two challenges.
Speaker 1: The other big one is you typically need more than
Speaker 1: one projector because you have to hit an object at
Speaker 1: various angles, and if you have one projector, all that
Speaker 1: light is just coming from one side, and if you're
Speaker 1: at any other viewing point around this three dimensional object,
Speaker 1: you're not going to get the effect of the projection.
Speaker 1: So you have to have multiple projectors all aiming at
Speaker 1: the same physical object. They each have to be calibrated
Speaker 1: properly with that object, with respect to the object and
Speaker 1: with respect to each other, so that the seams of
Speaker 1: those images line up precisely. If you have a character,
Speaker 1: and animated character show up on one side of the
Speaker 1: castle and then make his or her way around to
Speaker 1: the other side of the castle, and in that journey
Speaker 1: that character gets handed off from one projector to another,
Speaker 1: obviously you need to have that lineup as as best
Speaker 1: as possible to have a seamless experience. You can cheat
Speaker 1: a little bit with an object like Cinderella's castle, because
Speaker 1: you could have the character go into or appear to
Speaker 1: go into a tower or a window or a door,
Speaker 1: and it's kind of like a cut in a film.
Speaker 1: You could then have the character emerge from another window
Speaker 1: or another door, and it's being handled by a totally
Speaker 1: different projector, and because you had the character move out
Speaker 1: of sight for a moment, you don't have to have
Speaker 1: that truly seamless experience. You don't have to have those
Speaker 1: two projectors synchronized so precisely that there's no overlap, where
Speaker 1: otherwise you might end up with quasi Modo having four arms,
Speaker 1: which would make him even less quasi modo, or more
Speaker 1: quasi and less modo whatever. Hunchback of Notre Dame is
Speaker 1: a terrible Disney movie. Come at me, so very difficult
Speaker 1: problems to solve, and typically you have to design computer
Speaker 1: software in order for you to be able to do this. Uh,
Speaker 1: you being the person trying to create projection mapping. Luckily
Speaker 1: for us, if we were interested in doing our own
Speaker 1: projection mapping project, there are lots of software packages out
Speaker 1: there that are designed to do this, and typically the
Speaker 1: way it works is you would download one of these
Speaker 1: software packages, which tend to cost and a few hundreds
Speaker 1: of dollars, somewhere between three hundred and eight hundred dollars
Speaker 1: truly is not that much. When you look at video software,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of video editing software that's in that range.
Speaker 1: So something that's on this scale, which is meant to
Speaker 1: project against large objects, it's not really that outrageous to
Speaker 1: have a piece of software cost a few hundred dollars.
Speaker 1: You pair it with a projector or multiple projectors, and
Speaker 1: you typically would set up an object where it would
Speaker 1: be in the pathway of the projector, and you would
Speaker 1: use the software to manipulate a field on top of
Speaker 1: virtual field on top of the actual object, and what
Speaker 1: would happen is the projector would project an image, it
Speaker 1: may be a grid, for example, to define the areas
Speaker 1: of that object, and you would use the software to
Speaker 1: conform the grid so that it met the parameters of
Speaker 1: that object. So you are mapping the object itself within
Speaker 1: the software. You're defining the areas that you can paint
Speaker 1: against your defining the screen itself. And it's kind of
Speaker 1: like using photo editing software, except instead of just cropping
Speaker 1: a photo, what you're doing is you're just defining the
Speaker 1: edges of your image. So if you're doing something like
Speaker 1: Cinderella's Castle, you would say, all right, I want this tower,
Speaker 1: and I want the parapet at the top of the tower,
Speaker 1: but I don't want any of the edges to fall
Speaker 1: into this because we won't be able to see it.
Speaker 1: The projection will go just past the edge of the
Speaker 1: tower and there's nothing for the image to be projected
Speaker 1: against at that point, So we want to make sure
Speaker 1: that we define those edges within the software. Once you've
Speaker 1: done that, then you can start to animate or design
Speaker 1: lighting effects against that now virtually defined space. You also
Speaker 1: have to keep in mind that the distance between the
Speaker 1: projector and the object has to be established so that
Speaker 1: the scale remains the same. If you were to bring
Speaker 1: the projector closer or further away without adjusting lens, that's
Speaker 1: going to affect both the focus and the scale. So
Speaker 1: there are a lot of different elements that are at
Speaker 1: play with this technology, and if you want to work
Speaker 1: just right, you have to find the right place to
Speaker 1: set up your your technology. You have to calibrate it precisely,
Speaker 1: and then you have to make sure that nothing moves
Speaker 1: so that it's all lined up and stays lined up.
Speaker 1: So in this display or this this demonstration I was
Speaker 1: talking about earlier. They show that they'd use a program
Speaker 1: to define specific points on the three dimensional surface from
Speaker 1: the point of view of the projector in order to
Speaker 1: calibrate the system. So you would just use essentially a
Speaker 1: mouse moving a cursor to different points on the image
Speaker 1: of this three dimensional object. So you've got a camera
Speaker 1: and a projector that are lined up with each other,
Speaker 1: and you use the mouse to define, all right, this
Speaker 1: is an edge, this is an edge, or or here's
Speaker 1: a point, here's a point, here's a point, in order
Speaker 1: to calibrate it with the projector itself, and using multiple
Speaker 1: points allows for the system to line up precisely with
Speaker 1: the object. If you just clicked one point, there's not
Speaker 1: enough reference there. The image coordinates for the projectors are
Speaker 1: in two dimensions, you know, X and y axis, because
Speaker 1: depth is not really something a projector handles. A projector
Speaker 1: can't make the light stop at a certain distance. It's
Speaker 1: going to keep going till it reflects off of something.
Speaker 1: So you just are concerned with X and y and
Speaker 1: then you warp that depending upon the actual depth of
Speaker 1: the physical object you're shooting against or you're projecting against
Speaker 1: the actual points in space. Therefore are three dimensional, even
Speaker 1: though the data inside the projector is two dimensional, because
Speaker 1: those points in space have to conform with the physical
Speaker 1: features of a real object. In the demonstration I watched,
Speaker 1: they were projecting images on a model of the taj
Speaker 1: Mahal and it was very effective. The system, according to them,
Speaker 1: required about five minutes to calibrate per shader lamp, so
Speaker 1: that's not very long. I have no idea how long
Speaker 1: it takes to calibrate the Disney system. I was not
Speaker 1: able to chat with anybody to get that information, but
Speaker 1: I imagine it's again very precise and probably takes a
Speaker 1: few minutes to make sure that it's lined up reliably.
Speaker 1: Once set, then you just you said it. You leave it,
Speaker 1: you walk away, you don't touch it. Now, you can't
Speaker 1: just grab any old projector and a white or other
Speaker 1: neutral colored object and just go to town. The images
Speaker 1: you project will not match up with the object you're
Speaker 1: projecting on, so you have to have that way to
Speaker 1: warp the image so it lines up. I talked about
Speaker 1: this a second ago. You use that software to conform
Speaker 1: to the three dimensional object, um you needed. You need
Speaker 1: a computer obviously to run the software. The computer needs
Speaker 1: to have a pretty powerful processor and a really powerful
Speaker 1: graphics processing unit or GPU, because you need the processor
Speaker 1: that's strong so it can send a lot of data
Speaker 1: to the GPU consistently. You need to have a good
Speaker 1: pathway between processor and GPU, so that you also need
Speaker 1: a really good bus between the two. The GPU needs
Speaker 1: to be beefy because it's going to be sending a
Speaker 1: lot of data to the projector, and the more um
Speaker 1: high res the inag, the more data it has to send.
Speaker 1: If you're doing something on the scale of what Disney wants,
Speaker 1: chances are you've got pretty high standards for the resolution.
Speaker 1: Even keeping in mind that you're projecting this against an
Speaker 1: enormous castle and most people will be dozens of feet away,
Speaker 1: you still want it to be a really crisp image,
Speaker 1: So you're going to need some pretty powerful machines with
Speaker 1: really strong processing abilities to carry this off and send
Speaker 1: that information to your high res projectors to shoot it
Speaker 1: against the three dimensional object in question. Keeping in mind
Speaker 1: you're probably using multiple projectors, so that reduces the need
Speaker 1: for the the landscape you're covering for each projector, and thus,
Speaker 1: if each projector is lined up with a different dedicated computer.
Speaker 1: You can divide up the job a little bit, although
Speaker 1: all of those computers at some point have to be
Speaker 1: coordinated with one another. Otherwise you would have different parts
Speaker 1: of the show showing up at different segments and it
Speaker 1: would just be a mess, a chaotic mess. Projectors have
Speaker 1: something called a throw distance, that is the distance between
Speaker 1: the projector and a screen that it can show an
Speaker 1: effective image. So that's something you have to take into effect. Uh,
Speaker 1: you also have to worry about making sure that you've
Speaker 1: got the right you know, all the resolutions are the
Speaker 1: are the same, because otherwise, if the resolution of one
Speaker 1: projector is different from another, you're gonna have a very
Speaker 1: muddy effect on the three dimensional object in question. As
Speaker 1: I said, there are a lot of different software packages
Speaker 1: out there. There are some free ones if you want
Speaker 1: to try some projection mapping, although there reliability maybe a
Speaker 1: little less resilient than what you would get with a
Speaker 1: paid software package, But there are some out there that
Speaker 1: you can look at. But there there's tons of different
Speaker 1: projection mapping software suites out there if you if you're
Speaker 1: really serious of about doing this, you can PLoP down
Speaker 1: some cash and you'll get a more reliable and possibly
Speaker 1: more user friendly set of tools to do this yourself.
Speaker 1: To develop the Disney show, they started with a scale
Speaker 1: model of the castle, so everything had to be precisely
Speaker 1: at the right dimensions with one another in order for
Speaker 1: them to use that as their working model, because obviously
Speaker 1: they couldn't do this every single day out of the
Speaker 1: park there are people there, so to develop it, they
Speaker 1: needed to make a perfect scale model of Cinderella's Castle
Speaker 1: and use that to plot out their show. And they
Speaker 1: did this everything from the full narrative arc like what's
Speaker 1: the story they're trying to tell, to the particular animations
Speaker 1: and effects that they were trying to create. Obviously, anything
Speaker 1: that involved pyrotechnics probably they didn't throw in there, because
Speaker 1: shooting fireworks off inside is never a good idea. But
Speaker 1: for all the three D projection mapping techniques they could use.
Speaker 1: Those they could actually set up projectors and projected against
Speaker 1: the three dimensional scale model they had and see what
Speaker 1: it was going to look like on the small scale
Speaker 1: before they built up and worked on it for the
Speaker 1: actual park. They called in as many of the original
Speaker 1: animators for the various films that they reference in the show,
Speaker 1: so throughout the show, different iconic characters from Disney movies
Speaker 1: show up on Cinderella's castle. Uh, for example, Merida from
Speaker 1: Brave or Aladdin from Aladdin, We'll show up and they'll
Speaker 1: interact with the castle in some way. They tried to
Speaker 1: get as many of the original animators back to work
Speaker 1: on those characters as they possibly could, So it's a
Speaker 1: big thrill for a lot of those folks because they
Speaker 1: hadn't had a chance to work on those characters in
Speaker 1: some cases for several decades. And uh, it really is
Speaker 1: nice to be able to see those characters come to
Speaker 1: life and have the same sort of qualities that they
Speaker 1: had in the movies that they became famous for. So
Speaker 1: that's kind of cool thing too, is not just the technology,
Speaker 1: but if you are a Disney fan and you're also
Speaker 1: a fan of the process of animation, knowing that it
Speaker 1: was the same people responsible for bringing that to life
Speaker 1: the first time is really something special because it's it's
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's calling back to a nostalgic time. Now,
Speaker 1: of course, that wasn't the case for every single piece
Speaker 1: of animation they referenced. In some cases, those animators have
Speaker 1: passed away, especially for the really old classic Disney animated features,
Speaker 1: but it was a pretty impressive spectrum of characters, everything
Speaker 1: from the more recent shows and films, things like Mowanna
Speaker 1: and Zootopia too, classics like Sleeping Beauty. Well, we will
Speaker 1: never get rid of Maleficent. I think she's always going
Speaker 1: to be a villain in every single Disney nighttime spectacular
Speaker 1: because how can you how can you leave out a
Speaker 1: an evil fairy queen who assumes the shape of a dragon.
Speaker 1: That's that's pretty awesome, but I think that's a particularly
Speaker 1: interesting part of Happily ever After. Artists when they were
Speaker 1: working on this, we're working on digital services, so think
Speaker 1: of like, uh, an interactive screen, not not necessarily a tablet,
Speaker 1: but a display that they could directly draw on using
Speaker 1: light pens or digital pins. So they had the representation
Speaker 1: of the castle there, which was essentially a visual interpretation
Speaker 1: of the virtual model that they had created. So they
Speaker 1: had created a virtual model by defining the aspects of
Speaker 1: that castle the way I mentioned earlier. Artists could then
Speaker 1: draw against that and create the effects directly in the software,
Speaker 1: which then could be projected against the castle when they
Speaker 1: wanted to test things out, And this allowed them to
Speaker 1: developed the show relatively quickly. It still took a very
Speaker 1: long time, but it allowed for very quick prototyping and
Speaker 1: testing of different effects and transitions and sequences, which is
Speaker 1: pretty cool. And at the end of the show spoiler alert,
Speaker 1: tinker Bell comes out and flies over the crowd. This
Speaker 1: is something that's been going on for decades over at
Speaker 1: Disney and I think people would have rioted if tinker
Speaker 1: Bell had been removed from the experience, so uh. At
Speaker 1: Disney World, tinker Bell has been part of the nightly
Speaker 1: show since July third n at the Magic Kingdom. She
Speaker 1: hasn't appeared every single night because her appearance is dependent
Speaker 1: upon the weather. If the weather is if it's too
Speaker 1: windy or stormy, then tinker Bell will not be coming out.
Speaker 1: Because Okay, for those of you who don't want the
Speaker 1: magic ruined, you should probably stop listening right now, so
Speaker 1: I'm gonna give you a second. For the rest of you,
Speaker 1: Ramsey just took off his headphones. Jokes on him. He's
Speaker 1: like three ft away. He has to listen anyway. Tinker
Speaker 1: Bell is an actress, right all right. I hate to
Speaker 1: say it because I don't want to ruin the magic,
Speaker 1: but she's an actress typically sometimes an actor, but typically
Speaker 1: an actress and tinker Bell um. You know, they have
Speaker 1: to keep tinker Bell safe. So to that end, if
Speaker 1: the weather conditions are unfavorable, tinker Bell does not fly.
Speaker 1: Tinker Bell's flight is along a zip line. There is
Speaker 1: a zip line that is approximately eight hundred fifty feet long.
Speaker 1: It extends from the Cinderella's Castle from one of the towers,
Speaker 1: and it ends on the top of tomorrow Land Terrace
Speaker 1: d fifty feet away. A flight down tinker Bell's zip
Speaker 1: line takes about thirty seconds. So let's do some math here.
Speaker 1: Eight hundred fifty feet and thirty seconds translates to about
Speaker 1: nineteen miles per hour. That actress is zipping down a
Speaker 1: zip line at nineteen miles per hour in a tinker
Speaker 1: Bell costume that lights up, has led lights, there's a
Speaker 1: battery pack and everything. Uh, this means that tinker Bell
Speaker 1: has to meet some certain certain criteria. There's certain rules
Speaker 1: that you have to follow if you wish to be
Speaker 1: tinker Bell, and they're a little precise. I was going
Speaker 1: to use the words draconian, but that might be a
Speaker 1: little too cruel. So, for example, to be tinker Bell,
Speaker 1: you must be no taller than five ft that is
Speaker 1: the maximum height for tinker Bell. That's partly so that
Speaker 1: you get the wonderful illusion of the fairy flying over
Speaker 1: the audience. And you must weigh no more than one
Speaker 1: hundred five pounds because you're in a harness on a
Speaker 1: zip line, and that harness is rated up to a
Speaker 1: certain weight, which is well over a hundred five pounds.
Speaker 1: Clearly you wouldn't rate it at the in the cap weight,
Speaker 1: but that's why one of the reasons why I'm sure
Speaker 1: they have this strict weight limit of a hundred five pounds.
Speaker 1: Tinker Bell sometimes is played by a guy. Occasionally there's
Speaker 1: a fellow who will have to step in as tinker
Speaker 1: Bell if the actress typically playing tinker Bell is unavailable
Speaker 1: for whatever reason. At the end of the flight, you
Speaker 1: are greeted if you are tinker Bell, to the warm
Speaker 1: embrace of a net being held by a couple of
Speaker 1: technicians or cast members. Everyone who works at Disney is
Speaker 1: a cast member, so the net will slow you down,
Speaker 1: and you end your last little bit of your journey
Speaker 1: against a gymnastic matt that's on its side, so it's
Speaker 1: up against the edge of the or wall. Of the
Speaker 1: tomorrow Land terraces, so that way, if the net doesn't
Speaker 1: slow you down enough, you don't just go crashing into
Speaker 1: a wall. Um all right, So I'm done ruining the magic.
Speaker 1: That's it. So that's kind of the lowdown on Disney's
Speaker 1: Happily ever After. It is a great show if you
Speaker 1: have not seen it. There are videos on YouTube you
Speaker 1: can watch Happily ever After, and it's about an eighteen
Speaker 1: minute long display, so it's it's a doozy um. The
Speaker 1: technology is really impressive. I will say that I've watched
Speaker 1: the videos, it is way more impressive to see in person.
Speaker 1: So if you're already going to the Magic Kingdom, and
Speaker 1: if Happily ever After is scheduled to happen the night
Speaker 1: you are there, I highly recommend checking it out. I mean,
Speaker 1: you could go and ride more rides. There are gonna
Speaker 1: be a whole lot of people watching the show rather
Speaker 1: than doing that. But if you if you like Disney
Speaker 1: films in particular, and you really like fireworks, displays and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, innovative technology, I highly recommend it. It It is
Speaker 1: is a really well done show. It's not as narratively
Speaker 1: cohesive as I typically like. I like stories that have
Speaker 1: more to them than that. But it is a lot
Speaker 1: of fun to watch the different vignettes, and there's certain
Speaker 1: segments that just find breathtaking. I love Meredis segment. In
Speaker 1: that section, the entire castle appears to be covered in
Speaker 1: ivy and it's just really vibrant. And I also love
Speaker 1: Molana's section. And uh, there's a little bit at the
Speaker 1: end with with Simba's dad and with the song go
Speaker 1: the Distance from Hercules. This is particularly moving. Got dusty
Speaker 1: and ear. Okay, that's enough of that. I'm glad I
Speaker 1: had a chance to actually talk about this because again
Speaker 1: I had been planning it since before I took my trip.
Speaker 1: And uh, while I didn't get a chance to talk
Speaker 1: to any imagineers, and I hope one day to correct that.
Speaker 1: I would love to chat with some imagineers about what
Speaker 1: they do, because I think it's incredible the work that
Speaker 1: goes into creating these different Disney attractions. It's it's phenomenal stuff.
Speaker 1: I am very thankful that Disney was kind enough to
Speaker 1: extend to me a a pass for the day. Um
Speaker 1: I stayed for more than a day, so I bought
Speaker 1: all the other days, but one of those days was free.
Speaker 1: So just full disclosure again you guys. That wraps up
Speaker 1: this episode of tech Stuff. If you have suggestions for
Speaker 1: topics I should cover in future episodes, whether it's a
Speaker 1: specific technology, a company, a person in tech, let me know.
Speaker 1: Maybe there's someone you want me to interview, Maybe there's
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Speaker 1: chat room and I will be happy to chat with
Speaker 1: you between segments and just see what's going on in
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