Hollywood Fun With Propeller-powered LEDs

JonnyMac

Let me start out by saying that from a technical/programming standpoint, this project was easy. The tough part was working in tandem with one of Hollywood's best prop/fx crews that don't normally have to work around wires (I had to fix a few broken wires). The photos attached are from a trade show display for the a new game from Red 5 Studios called Firefall.

Steve Wang was contracted to build the display and he called me in to help with the electronics. The entire display is "Powered by Parallax" if you will, with three Propellers and a BASIC Stamp II in the mix. Funny, the master controller is a BASIC Stamp II in the form of the EFX-TEK Prop-2 Controller (essentially, an industrialized BS2) and the Propellers are slaves. The first Propeller is in the EFX-TEK AP-16+ audio player (that I designed and coded), and there are Propeller Platforms (classic version, my original design) with transistor output boards for driving all the LEDs in each character.

Construction of the display took about six weeks; this includes molding and casting the bodies, hand-sculpting the heads, molding the heads in silicone so they can have hair punched into them.... it's amazing what goes into this sort of prop/display. I'm really grateful that they call me in to do the electronics work, even though I do get a lot of [friendly] flack for being an electronics geek.

The character control programs are fun and easy: the main cog starts a 12-channel dimmer (PASM) cog then launches Spin cogs that do the dimming animation in each section. The Spin cogs are setup as state machines so that the master cog can tell them what they should be doing (global state variables are used to send/check states). For this display (for PAX in Seattle this week, but this is the second of these displays we built), I added an additional Spin cog to each character that uses Morse code to flash "Red 5 Studios Firefall" and then the character's name. As simple thing, but the gaming company executives and employees loved it.

Steve Wang is being interviewed by G4 tomorrow in front of the display and will talk a bit about the lighting work in the characters. I'll post a link if that interview hits the web.

Finally, for you newcomers that think LED control is boring, think again -- in Hollywood, we have a lot of fun with LEDs and I can tell you having spent all day today with this display, thousands of people enjoyed it.

Roy Eltham

Firefall is a pretty awesome looking game. I know a couple of the people at Red 5 (they used to work where I work). That's a really nice display!

Cluso99

Thanks for the info Jon. It's great to see props being used The last pic looks quite realistic.

JonnyMac

It was particularly fun to see the folks who created these things in a PC as digital models see them "come to life" through this display. It's one thing to see Typhon, Morningstar, and the thumper on a PC in the game (or even the hi-res trailer for it), it's quite another to see it up close and personal at full scale. We were all very proud of our work.

frank freedman

Cool pics, dudes arm looks like a phlebotomist's ahem, uh dream.....

FF

Rayman

Very impressive display. Game looks cool too.

Ahle2

JonnyMac

It's even cooler in action. The thumper has pneumatic doors that lower and rase, a smoke machine, and the the top section goes up and down while the pile driver element "thumps" (you can see this action in the game preview). In the BS2 code I watch for a sensor input and then send a command to the AP-16 to play the "thump" sound from the game; a short delay between the sensor input and the command keeps the sound effect in sync with the physical prop. We're using one channel of the AP-16 for the thump sound; it goes to a set of speakers under the platform and is routed to two amplified speakers that are external. You can hear the "thump" in other parts of the building.

When we finished setup the building inspector came by and asked me if there was any danger of damaging the floor with the thumping! We assured him that it was "Hollywood magic" and that there was no danger.

Martin Hodge

This is really cool! Video games sure have come a long way.