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Fenning Awards
for Tech Achievement Produce
First Place Tie
A new
software approach to creating sophisticated laser displays and
new laser technology for projecting those displays received top
honors in ILDA’s 2001 Fenning Awards for Technical Achievement.
First-place was awarded to Pangolin Laser Systems for its Lasershow
Converter Max program and to a joint entry by
Audio
Visual Imagineering (AVI)
and
Schneider
Laser Technologies for the Schneider Showlaser. Dirk
Aptiz
received 2nd place for his ScanMaster2 controller hardware, while
LOBO electronic
was awarded 3rd place for its second-generation Lacon-5 multimedia
workstation. Honorable mentions went to lasers.org for its LaserMAME
software package and to Laser Fantasy International
(LFI) for
a new dynamic filtering projection technique.
Pangolin’s new program, also called LCMax, is a plug-in
that works with the poplar 3D Studio Max program to create full-featured
laser shows directly from conventional computer graphics. The
LCMax program debuted in pre-release form at the 2000 ILDA Conference
in Stuttgart, where attendees got their first glimpse of a program
that could directly translate computer graphic images into laser
light. The Pangolin software is a “plug-in” that works
seamlessly with 3D Studio Max to render laser frames that are
faithful to the images created in the computer graphics program.
Complex camera movements, character animations, and inverse kinematics—elements
rarely found in laser shows but common in computer graphics—are
captured by LCMax and instantly rendered in laser light. The
frames are sent to Pangolin’s QM2000 board and can be saved
in either Pangolin or ILDA file formats (click here for
more details).
Also receiving first place was the new Schneider Showlaser, a
solid-state, full-color laser that produces 10 watts of white-light
power yet runs off a standard 220 volt outlet. The system’s
high laser power is combined with other features that have made
solid state lasers so attractive to laserists: long lifetime,
low power consumption and minimal cooling requirements. The Schneider
system has an estimated laser lifetime of 10,000 hours, contains
its own water-to-air cooling system, and draws only 16 amps of
power from a single-phase 220-volt wall outlet (click
here for more details).
Manufactured in Germany by Schneider Laser Technologies AG, the
new laser system was first seen last year as a video projector,
but is now available to power vector graphics displays. Although
solid-state lasers have proven extremely popular in the laser
display field, the color choices have largely been limited to
red and green. The Showlaser is the first high-powered laser
to feature red, green and blue wavelengths and to offer a modulated,
color-balanced palette designed for display purposes. AVI is
the exclusive US distributor of the Showlaser.
ILDA Member Dirk Aptiz received the 2nd place Fenning Award for
his ScanMaster2 laser projector control board. The ScanMaster2
connects an entire laser projection system to a client computer
via standard Ethernet using TCP/IP. The board itself can be mounted
in a projector, a standalone adapter box, or a recording/playback
system. It comes with fully implemented ISP inputs, outputs and
inputs for galvo positioning and monitoring, 8 color outputs
and several I/Os connected to a 100MHz DSP with open source firmware.
The system is powerful enough to do real-time interpolation of
vectors and curves, geometric and color space processing, galvo
safety monitoring and zone control.
LOBO electronic was awarded 3rd place for the second-generation
Lacon-5 multimedia laser workstation and show controller. Ten
times faster than its predecessor, the new Lacon-5 is based on
a modular hardware structure that avoids data bottlenecks and
allows for almost unlimited expansion. LOBO’s new high-resolution
Scanline laser video feature can directly import video MPEG files
(as well as all common bitmap file formats) and display rasterized
laser output said to be four times higher in resolution than
other systems.
Honorable mentions were awarded to lasers.org for its LaserMAME
playback system and to Laser Fantasy International (LFI) for
“ Dynamic Image Filtering Utilizing Beam Brush.” LFI’s
technology employs a small galvo-mounted filter that can be inserted
fully or partially into the path of a laser beam. The filter
gives an otherwise sharp beam a soft, more diffuse look, with
the degree of softness varied by how far the filter is inserted
into the beam path. Because filter insertion is controlled by
a rapidly moving galvo, vector points within a laser graphic
can be softened on an individual basis.
The LaserMAME technology by lasers.org takes its cue from the
freeware MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) software that
allows modern PC’s to accurately reproduce vector-based
arcade games popular in the early 1980s. But instead of playing
these games on a computer monitor, LaserMAME allows the games
to be played and projected in full-color laser light.
This year’s awards were judged by a three-person panel consisting
of Steve Heminover, president of Aura Technologies, Marc Gringas,
head of MDG, and Greg Hughes of Peachtree Lasers. ILDA renamed
its award program honoring technology in 1998 to commemorate
the late Fred Fenning, who pioneered many laser display developments
during his 21-year career in the laser field. |
The Schneider Showlaser
produces 10 watts of modulated white-light from solid-state laser
sources. |
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Teapot is created
in 3D Studio Max (left) and then rendered in laser light with
Lasershow Converter Max (lright). Lines rendered in laser include
silhouette, folds and surface intersections with object. |
Additional
Awards Coverage:
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