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10b. OUTPUT screen: WARP, masks and SOFT EDGE BLEND

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Continues page 10a — geometric calibration and color for the selected slice: warping for the lens and the screen, masks, stitching neighboring projectors and the slice's own color.

WARP and SLICE WARP

Warping is built from layers. The WARP section in the screen card on the left bends the whole output, the SLICE WARP section in the slice card on the right bends only that slice; every slice has its own stack, so several slices of one display are warped independently. The + LAYER ▾ button adds a layer: 4POINT (four corners — perspective correction and simple keystone), 9POINT, CUSTOM, GRID (a grid of nodes), CIRCULAR, LENS DEFORM; the screen's WARP also has REFERENCE. Layers apply top to bottom (TOP APPLIED FIRST): the checkbox turns a layer off, ↑ ↓ change the order, × deletes. The EDIT POINTS button (POINTS for a slice) shows the selected layer's points on the canvas of the OUTPUT TRANSFORMATION tab, DRAW ON OUTPUT (ON OUTPUT for a slice) draws them directly over the live picture of the physical output. Slice points are set as fractions of its rectangle before rotation — rotating the slice does not move them. While the slice points are open, its position, size and rotation handles are hidden.

Slice 2 with a corner of the 4POINT layer of its SLICE WARP moved — the quadrilateral's left edge runs on a diagonal; Slice 1 next to it stays rectangular, a rotation handle is visible above the selected shape; on the right — the collapsed slice card sections, the POINTS and ON OUTPUT buttons in the SLICE WARP header; in the status line under the canvas — hints on dragging points and groups

Slice operations — adding a slice, duplicating and moving it to another screen — close (commit, not cancel) an open mask or WARP / SLICE WARP point editing session on the active slice as their very first step: edits do not silently carry over to a copy or to a new slice with the same number.

SLICE MASK and SCREEN MASK

A mask is a polygon from 3 to 32 vertices with a soft edge and inversion; each slice has its own SLICE MASK (in the slice card), the screen as a whole has its own SCREEN MASK (in the screen card), both work the same way. The outline is drawn as a paired contour (outer/inner) directly on the canvas; until it is created, the field shows "NO MASK", the create button places a starting rectangle at 0.25…0.75 of the frame. The EDIT / INVERT / SMOOTH / POINTS buttons control the outline; GAMMA and a field in pixels set the edge softness, UNIFORM FEATHER gives the same feather all along the outline.

Expanded sections of the screen card on the left — SCREEN COLOR (OPACITY, BRIGHT, CONTRAST, RED, GREEN, BLUE), NETWORK SENDS (the NDI SEND and SPOUT SEND stream name fields), SCREEN MASK (NO MASK, the EDIT/INVERT/SMOOTH/POINTS buttons, GAMMA), WARP (EDIT POINTS, DRAW ON OUTPUT); and the slice card on the right — the UNDO / REDO and RESET SLICE buttons on top, then SLICE TRANSFORM, SLICE OPTIONS, SLICE WARP (an empty layer list, + LAYER ▾, NO WARP), SLICE COLOR, SOFT EDGE BLEND with GAMMA 2.20 and status AUTO BLEND OFF, the SLICE MASK header; at the bottom left — a hint on working with mask points

SOFT EDGE BLEND and AUTO BLEND

SOFT EDGE BLEND — stitching neighboring projectors along an edge: pick a side of the slice (LEFT / RIGHT / TOP / BOTTOM), ENABLE EDGE turns on a ramp on that side, GAMMA sets the curve's shape (the sum of the projectors' light in the overlap zone equals 1 at gamma 2.2), EDIT ON SLICE edits the ramp directly on the canvas, SMOOTH CURVE smooths it, RESET EDGE returns it to a straight line.

AUTO BLEND resolves overlaps automatically from a map of slice overlaps: the AUTO BLEND button computes the blend for the selected slice, ALL SCREENS — for all slices of the project at once, the POWER slider sets the curve's exponent, the status line shows the number of slices, overlaps and the sum of light in the overlap zone. For a classic layout — a cross of four projectors or a 2×2 wall — the light sum's deviation from the ideal does not exceed 0.005, against 0.96 for manual edge stitching.

Four screens A/B/C/D arranged in a cross (above, below, to the left and right of the center one), AUTO BLEND · ON, POWER 2.00, the status line "4 SLICES · 6 OVERLAPS · MAX 4× · Σ 1.00 ±0.00" — what auto-blend looks like on the overlaps

Not solved: the black level in the middle of a seam is not evened out on dark content, and color and brightness matching between projectors is not done — both of these tasks remain with the operator.

SLICE COLOR

The color of the slice itself, separate from the screen's SCREEN COLOR and from the window's COLOR in the clip panel: BRIGHTNESS, CONTRAST, RED / GREEN / BLUE — matching a particular projector or monitor on site.

IMPORT/EXPORT JSON and PRESETS

IMPORT and EXPORT JSON at the bottom of the left column save and load the whole output configuration as a file (DL20 Output JSON) — screens, slices, geometry, masks, blend; exporting and re-importing restore the configuration bit for bit. PRESETS at the top of the column — a list of saved output layouts inside the project itself, the SAVE button next to it saves the current one.

Parameters

Parameter Values
WARP / SLICE WARP layers 4POINT, 9POINT, CUSTOM, GRID, CIRCULAR, LENS DEFORM; REFERENCE — screen WARP only
GRID layer up to 64×64 cells
Mask 3–32 vertices, soft edge, inversion; one outline per slice/screen
SOFT EDGE BLEND, gamma light sum = 1 at γ 2.2
AUTO BLEND, deviation ≤ 0.005 (manual-path baseline 0.96)
SLICE COLOR BRIGHTNESS, CONTRAST, RED, GREEN, BLUE
Export/import JSON, bit-for-bit round trip

Limitations

  • A mask is a single outline (outer/inner) per slice or per screen; several outlines with KEEP/CUT modes and a mask from a PNG file are not implemented in this version.
  • AUTO BLEND does not even out the black level in the middle of a seam on dark content, and does not match the color and brightness of different projectors with each other.