DWP Live has taken delivery of nine d3 Technologies 4x4pro media servers for its live event business and DWP Rents dry hire service, and they've been flying off the shelves.
Headquartered in Nashville and with an office in LA, DWP Live offers cutting-edge video projection and projection mapping for corporate, agency and design clients. It owns one of the largest inventories of HD DLP projectors, screens, LEDs, switchers and HD cameras and has now expanded its roster of media servers with its first purchase of d3 4x4pros.
"We ramped up rather quickly with d3," says DWP Live founder and president, Danny Whetstone. "A lot of our acquisitions are driven by customer demand, and we've seen a big shift toward d3 and the power it brings to the industry. We've been looking at d3 media servers for a while and have only seen them get better. We expect to continue adding units to our inventory - we're not stopping at nine."
"With d3 we now offer a full 3D workflow from content to media server," notes chief technologist Ben Ryle. "That shows in the quality of the production and the speed of set up and execution. For building projects and 3D mapping nothing is faster!"
DWP Live rolled out d3 4x4 pros on two high-profile projection mapping projects: Barco's Belgian Beer Bar at CinemaCon 2015 in Las Vegas and the Oculto Beer product launch at the InterContinental Hotel in Miami.
Barco's Belgian Beer Bar is something of a tradition at CinemaCon where DWP Live marked its fourth consecutive year performing projection mapping at Barco's party venue the night before the end of the convention. CinemaCon is the largest and most important gathering for the worldwide motion picture theater industry attracting attendees from more than 80 countries; it's also the official convention of the National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO).
Barco's Belgian Beer Bar is always set up on the Neptune Pool Deck at Caesars Palace where Barco projectors are used to display a fun branded narrative, featuring the magical adventures of a little boy, on the neo-classical façade. This year the boy was pursued by an animated dragon that slithered across the building, in and out of various ancient environments. DWP Live deployed Barco's new HDF W30 projectors among the dozen required for the projection mapping.
"Every year the content design and projection mapping are punchier, brighter, sharper," says Justin Crutchfield, account executive at DWP Live. "It's always a high energy and fun event."
The projectors were ground-supported and triple stacked in four zones around the pool area. Two active d3 4x4pro media servers were used and a pair of laptops ran d3 Designer, the software-only version of the d3 production suite, which enables designers, project managers and technicians to work on a unified communication and collaboration platform.
The approximately 3.5-minute show was a 4Kx4K video file running in Hap Q. Five Stone Studios in Nashville was the content creator and 3G Audio in Las Vegas designed the soundtrack.
Ryle and his team used QuickCal to rapidly calibrate the projectors on site. "We had a mesh of the laser scan of the building which we took into d3 then aligned the projectors. What used to take us four or five hours was reduced to about two with QuickCal. And within that first half-hour we got about 90 percent there in the process: The rest of the time we spent fine tuning things. The speed of the process made us and the client very confident right off the bat."
Whetstone notes that, "We calibrated the projectors the night before the show and were done before midnight - it used to take us until dawn. So it was great to finish before the sun came up."
Using two d3 Designers allowed Ryle's team "to QuickCal the top and the bottom of the building separately," he says. In addition, one Designer triggered the show remotely. "Since the Designers ran on laptops we were able to QuickCal fast and start the show from a place where we could see it," Ryle explains. "The media servers were in a rainproof cabana, and we couldn't see any part of the building from that spot."
Within days of CinemaCon, DWP Live was off to Miami with two d3 media servers to perform projection mapping for an experiential event introducing Anheuser-Busch's new tequila-flavored Oculto Beer, which culminated in a projection mapping show playing in two-minute loops from 8 pm to midnight on the concave façade of the Intercontinental Hotel.
Working for executive producer and content provider Integrated Visions, DWP Live deployed nine Barco HDF-W26 projectors triple stacked in portrait mode to accommodate the hotel's tall silhouette. One d3 4x4pro acted as the primary media server; another 4x4pro was on hand set up with auto failover in case of an emergency.
"All the content was created in projection perspective, so we used d3's feed warping extensively to correct for the differences between the content and the building," explains Ryle. The content included geometric projections and product branding, including mapping the entire bottle onto the high-rise hotel. "It looked really cool - you could see it across Miami," he says.
Once again Ryle's team took advantage of d3 Designer to run the show remotely. "We didn't want to work out of the projection tent and possibly shake the structure, which was sent up for a 250-foot throw," he notes. "So we ran the show from a laptop on the grounds."
"We're really excited to have d3 in our inventory as an important addition to our toolkit," says Crutchfield. "The d3 media servers offer an easy, stress-free process that everyone appreciates."
About d3
d3 is the world's first fully integrated visual production system for video professionals, combining a real-time 3D stage visualizer, timeline, video playback engine and projection mapping tools into one product. d3's unique integrated workflow assists the designer at all stages of the project, from pitch through development to final delivery. For more information, visit d3technologies.com