Sketch Town is an exhibit at the Children’s Creativity Museum where visitors’ paper drawings come to life in an immersive digital neighborhood. Visitors can pick from 10 different building or vehicle paper coloring sheets. Each template has unique fiducials in the corners that allow the teamLab software to recognize what type of drawing it is and apply the scan as a UV map onto a corresponding 3D model. The newly created 3D vehicle or building is then added to the town on the main projection screen. Visitors can touch the buildings and vehicles to cue different animations. Above, a 6th projector provides a real time birds eye view of the town from the perspective of a flying new helicopter. This exhibit was a collaboration between teamLab, Hitachi USA, and CCM. Although there are many other Sketch Town installations around the world, this is currently the only one on a large cylindrical projection surface.
This installation features 6 Hitachi projectors, 5 of which are mapped onto the interior of the main projection wall and blended together. 6 Hokuyo Lidar sensors provided multitouch input. 4 networked computers were used, 1 laptop for the paper scanner, 2 laptops for the sensors, and 1 tower PC to run the SketchTown software and output to the projectors. Projection Mapping was done using Hitachi software for image warping to the curved surface and teamLab software for edge blending and fine tuning.
Wall fabrication work was contracted out to Gizmo Art & Production. Their team fabricated the wall offsite in sections, then assembled and finished onsite. My roles included project management, corporate sponsorship and contract negotiations, projection mapping, sensor calibration, and A/V installation.
