Pirates Halloween 2020

[@susanowen1709]

OMG that is amazing! The way the physical cannons are timed with the battle projection, the laser/fog swamps, the backdrop to the skeleton at the wheel...I am in awe. Best pirate display I've ever seen.

[@faersher]

Blimey!! That is the BEST Halloween display I have ever seen!! I would PAY to see this! Excellent work!!!!!!!

[@MakoStorm]

Amazing work

[@cyberi4a]

This was really done well, it must have been awesome in person. The cannon battle was great.

[@valentispub1]

Wow. Excellent work!

[@obijuankenobi3846]

That is freaking EPIC!!!

[@thewitchhut63]

Definitely impressed! Awesome job!!!!

[@DinaLouie]

The perfect anecdote to this crazy year! 👍

[@C4ptainRedbeard]

that is fantastic

[@deoblo85]

thats Freakin Amazing !! pirate Battle was Awesome ! HFL!!

[@melaniesmith1313]

I am speechless. I got teary-eyed watching it. It was utterly fabulous. You made my day!

[@AIM54A]

I'm glad you enjoyed it. It was my first pirate themed Halloween and a ton of fun setting up. We'll be doing pirates again this year with some additions and modifications to this setup.

[@sarahturner4148]

@@AIM54A hi, i live in socal too and am trying to do a pirates themed house as well! is there anyway you could let me know your whereabouts and I could swing by to look?

[@4doorvette]

Would you share a diy vid or instructions on how u made the cannons and their movement?

[@importkillergto]

That was brilliant. Loved it

[@AIM54A]

Thanks! Its was a lot of fun to try something new.

[@brandeesims]

Incredible!

[@amberboler3537]

This is absolutely fantastic and so creative. Where did you get the blue pirate hologram? And how did you project onto a screen? How did you make the skeletons mouths move with the soundtrack? Last question where do you find the hologram for the garage? We are trying to do a similar theme this year

[@kathleenpruitt7851]

Awesome

[@loisvelella9117]

Great show! Can you tell me what your fabric was for the projection and how you hung it.

[@AIM54A]

The lower garage doors where covered with white photographic backdrop paper (roll) that was stapled every few feet to the house. It's a continuous single piece of paper so no seams in this case.. This year the upper part of the house will also be covered to better hide the windows etc. If you just need a small area then you can purchase projection screen material which reflects more light.

[@inielsyke]

anywhere to find this projection that you've created?

[@shelleykruse1500]

How did you do that effect off of your roof? It looked so cool! Everything was truly amazing.

[@AIM54A]

The entire front of the house was projection mapped using a short throw projector. The video/animation was custom made for the house.

[@jessigirlrae1688]

Where did you get the Pirate projection singing the pirate song? I would love to use that this year!

[@AIM54A]

The one on the pumpkins? thesingingpumpkin dot com has it. For copyright reasons you have to purchase the song from amazon then send it to him and he then can then add the animation to the singing pumpkin.

[@adydevers9260]

Would it be possible for you to do a tutorial on how to make the cannon's or a walk around and show how it all works, that would be great.

[@AIM54A]

The cannons are back in storage right now. The cannons are fairly complex, a mix of electronics, Pneumatics, The basic function of firing is as follows. Activate fogger for 1 second, activate solenoid to energize pneumatic piston (firing effect and recoil). Turn on Orange LED light for fire effect.. Play sound effect. Then solenoids are disabled which causes the air cylinders to retract resetting the cannon. The fogger is under the barrel vertical and injecting fog through a tiny 1/8" copper tube at the pivot point of the barrel.

[@AIM54A]

The electronics are controlled by some custom software that is using wireless DMX to communicate to all the active props I use around the house. A DMX relay board is fairly cheap and available from amazon or aliexpress. The electronics box which sits in the rear under the barrel is a power supply (12V, 5V) which runs the relay board. The relay board is 5 channel I think. So Channel 1 is fogger, 2 is pneumatic solenoid etc. The Piston in the barrel is mounted to the End cap of the barrel and a tight fitting cast plastic piston is pushed forward at high speed causing the "puff" of smoke to blow out of the cannon. The cannon carriage is 2x4's on the sides with plywood bottom.. Power lines, pneumatics, etc pass through the bottom and out the back.

[@tiffm7561]

What is the green light that you used? A special projector?

[@AIM54A]

If you mean the green lights that are close to ground then those are green line lasers. I think I got those from alieexpress. The green/blue tunnel effect is a RGB laser. Just remember to keep lasers under 5mw to be eye safe, or make sure nobody can get their eyes into the lasers.

[@brucesteinberg6444]

what is that captain projection on the right side at about 6 minutes in?

[@AIM54A]

Hes one of the pirates that AtmosFX had in their pirate video series a few years ago.. He should still be available. I'm using a peppers ghost effect to project him here. I was using an old piece of plexiglass that had dew/water condense on it making it visible. Normally you cant see the mirror. I now use a really thick mylar plastic film which makes the screen/mirror really hard to see.

[@brucesteinberg7195]

@@AIM54A Thanks. I have a projector and use an opaque piece of plastic to project on from behind. I'll see if I can find the Atmos FX video

[@kellyhart2568]

Where do you get the holograms?

[@AIM54A]

I used a company called atmosfx. They have a website and youtube channel.. kzbin.info Lots of good videos

[@lddcavalry]

Mask and tongs 😂

[@tedmoga4797]

Did you make the projection video for the cannon firing to show in the video. How did you make it? I would like to do the same. If you made it, what software did you use? Or where can I buy the video? I made 2 cannons a years ago, I am now writing a DMX recorder/Playback program to control my display. Here is a video of how I made my 2 cannons. kzbin.info/www/bejne/p2eYaIJvmJuEkJY

[@AIM54A]

The video was custom made to map to our house. We added the cannon ball effects when we made the video then I sync'd the real cannon's to match the video. The software was custom written for the event. I use a sprite DMX video player to start the video at a specific time then all the cannon events are timed off of that. I believe there are some open source DMX time encoding packages out there that would do what you need.

[@AIM54A]

Software packages like MadMapper allow you to get a projection map of your house made fairly quickly. If you have video sources (ie. AtmosFX) you can map those videos onto your house/area.

[@tedmoga4797]

@@AIM54A Thanks for the reply, BTW great display. I hope I can make one as nice. I am not tying to map a video to my house. I just want to make a video for a rear projection screen. I have the Pirate DVD from HI-Rez Designs. I would like to add the cannon ball flying thru the video and splashing into the water. I am using OSB studio to try and do that. Maybe just scroll a cannon ball image, or maybe scroll a GIF? I was just wandering how you added the moving cannon ball to your video? It would save me a lot of work if you could share your video?

[@AIM54A]

@@tedmoga4797 I'll check and see if that's possible. The cannon ball was rendered into the scene so it's not a separate video component that was overlaid. You might be able to simulate the effect by flashing the video red/orange when the cannon fires then use a burning red circle/sphere (ie. adobe after effects) then scale down the circle and translate it to simulate the ball flying away from the screen and moving.

[@tedmoga4797]

@@AIM54A Yes I know it is all in one video. That is what I would like to get, it would save me a lot of time. I think I could write a program that would make the cannon ball shoot across a picture box. Then do a screen capture of that with OSB. Then overlay it onto a video of a ship in a cannon fight. I think I will just go back to the way I was planning on doing it. Like in this video? kzbin.info/www/bejne/Y5fVZ52Vr7Njick , I already have the DVD