This is the story of the 270 Degree video mapped dome. How it came to be, what it means, and how I did it.

The SAT Dome

In 2019 I had the pleasure of attending Mutek in Montreal. While I was there I found myself sitting in the SAT Dome, a fully 360 degree mapped dome that provided an incredible immersive experience. While the concept of a video mapped dome was not new to me, experiencing it first hand was utterly amazing. Ever since then I had wanted to replicate the experience.

Building The Dome

When I was living in Bellingham I had built a dome for local festivals as a contribution to the arts and festival community. I would bring it to various events and it always took one form or another. Either it was dressed in fabrics, spun with hundreds of feet of yarn, or covered in cargo netting. Back then I could only dream of video mapping such a beast. This was before I had begun delving into the world of VJ’ing and TouchDesigner.

Whenever I brought the dome to an event people were immediately amazed at the scale and complexity. Such a feat of engineering! How does one construct such an object? What seems like a deep dive into 3D geometry and vector mathematics is actually quite simple given the right tools. I studied the website simplydifferently.org and found dome calculators of all types. If anyone is interested in building a dome, I highly suggest checking out the dome calculator pages.

I picked a 3V Octahedron Dome for its simplicity. I found the largest length of 3/4″ EMT conduit I could get my hands on at my local hardware store and set that as the longest strut in the online calculator. It spit out the three different lengths I needed to construct a dome measuring about 30′ in diameter.

The thing I really like about the dome is the sense of space it provides., especially at pop-up events. It really adds a dimension of space and flow to the environment. The choice in size and materials lends itself to a structure that is fairly easy to transport, setup, tear-down, and re-assemble at a later date.

Fabricating a covering was probably the most difficult part. With some help from friends and the promise of a kick-ass immersive dome experience, we ordered large reams of parachute material and sewed them together to form walls. We later ordered a white parachute to cover the very top of the dome. Parachute material is light-weight, keeps moisture away, and it’s thin enough to easily backlight with a projector.

Video Mapping

I started exploring UV textures mapped onto 3D objects in TouchDesigner to get an idea of what kind of content I would use.

This project was to debut at a local festival gathering called Forest Creatures near the end of Summer 2020. My dream was to have a fully 360 mapped dome using the Cam Schnapper tool in Touchdesigner, but as the event neared closer and closer, compromises were made.

I realized I could map three-quarters of the dome at most due to the size and positioning of three external projectors and my single laptop. I also recognized the complexity and amount of time it takes to build a proper interface in TouchDesigner. I opted for mapping 3/4 of the dome, and using Resolume as my toolset. Resolume was fast and easy to work with. But I still needed to practice video mapping and since Foreset Creatures takes place on National Forest land, the last thing I wanted to do is learn all of this on the fly out in the woods. I realized I needed a scale model.

The Model

With some help from my partner and the online dome calculator, I constructed a 1/5th scale model of the dome out of foam core and white duct tape.

Practice makes perfect. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from doing DIY events outside it’s that practicing your setup beforehand is crucial. With the scale model successfully constructed and hanging from my living room wall, I was able to practice video mapping. I would set up projectors and “start from scratch” every time in order to simulate the process of doing it for real.

The Final Product

The final product is a video mapped dome wrapping around 270 degrees in the forest at a music festival for four days.