For a more complete documentation, go visit the wiki.
Splash is a free (as in GPL) modular mapping software. Provided that the user creates a 3D model with UV mapping of the projection surface, Splash will take care of calibrating the videoprojectors (intrinsic and extrinsic parameters, blending and color), and feed them with the input video sources. Splash can handle multiple inputs, mapped on multiple 3D models, and has been tested with up to eight outputs on two graphic cards. It currently runs on a single computer but support for multiple computers mapping together is planned.
Splash has been primarily targeted toward fulldome mapping, and has been extensively tested in this context. Two fulldomes have been mapped: a small dome (3m wide) with 4 projectors, and a big one (20m wide) with 8 projectors. It has also been tested sucessfully as a more regular video-mapping software to project on buildings. Focus has been made on optimization: as of yet Splash can handle flawlessly a 3072x3072@30Hz live video input, and 4096x4096@60Hz on eight outputs (two graphic cards) with a powerful enough cpu and the HapQ video codec (on a SSD as this codec needs a very high bandwidth). Due to its architecture, higher resolutions are more likely to run smoothly when a single graphic card is used, although nothing higher than 4096x4096@60Hz has been tested yet (well, we tested 6144x6144@60Hz but the drive throughput was not enough to sustain the video bitrate).
Splash can read videos from various sources amoung which video files (most common format and Hap variations), video input (such as video cameras and capture cards), Syphon on OSX, and Shmdata (a shared memory library used to make softwares from the SAT Metalab communicate between each others). An addon for Blender is included which allows for exporting draft configurations and update in real-time the meshes. It also handles automatically a few things:
- semi automatic geometric calibration of the video-projectors,
- automatic calibration of the blending between them,
- automatic colorimetric calibration (with a gPhoto compatible camera)
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This project can be found either on the SAT Metalab repository or on Github.
This project is made possible thanks to the Society for Arts and Technologies (also known as SAT). Thanks to the Ministère du Développement économique, de l'Innovation et de l'Exportation du Québec (MDEIE).
Splash relies on a few libraries to get the job done. These libraries are:
- OpenGL, which should be installed by the graphic driver,
- libshmdata to read video flows from a shared memory,
- GSL (GNU Scientific Library) to compute calibration,
- ZMQ to communicate between the various process involved in a Splash session,
- portaudio to read and output audio,
- Python for scripting capabilities,
- GPhoto to use a camera for color calibration.
A few more libraries are used as submodules in the git repository:
- FFmpeg to read video files,
- GLFW to handle the GL context creation,
- GLM to ease matrix manipulation,
- ImGui to draw the GUI,
- doctest to do some unit testing,
- Piccante to create HDR images,
- Snappy to handle Hap codec decompression,
- libltc to read timecodes from an audio input,
- JsonCpp to load and save the configuration,
- stb_image to read images.
The current release of Splash has currently only been compiled and tested on Ubuntu (version 16.04) and Mint 18 and higher. The easy way to install it is to get the Debian archive from the release page, and install it with :
sudo apt install <download path>/splash-<version>-Linux.deb
You can also compile Splash by hand, especially if you are curious about its internals or want to tinker with the code (or even, who knows, contribute!). Note that although what follows compiles the develop branch, it is more likely to contain bugs alongside new features / optimizations so if you experience crash you can try with the master branch.
sudo apt install build-essential git-core cmake automake libtool clang libxrandr-dev libxi-dev
sudo apt install libglm-dev libgsl0-dev libatlas3-base libzmq3-dev libgphoto2-dev
sudo apt install libxinerama-dev libxcursor-dev python3-dev yasm portaudio19-dev
git clone git://github.com/paperManu/splash
cd splash
git submodule update --init
./make_deps.sh
mkdir -p build && cd build
cmake ..
make && sudo make install
You can now try launching Splash:
splash --help
If you want to have access to realtime scheduling within Splash, you need to create a group "realtime", add yourself to it and set some limits:
sudo addgroup realtime
sudo adduser $USER realtime
sudo cp ./data/config/realtime.conf /etc/security/limits.d/
And if you want the logs to be written to /var/log/splash.log:
sudo adduser $USER syslog
Then log out and log back in.
If you want to specify some defaults values for the objects, you can set the environment variable SPLASH_DEFAULTS with the path to a file defining default values for given types. An example of such a file can be found in data/splashrc
And that's it, you can move on the the Walkthrough page.
OSX installation is still a work in progress and has not been extensively tested (far from it!). Also, our current tests have shown that it is far easier to install on OSX version 10.9 or newer, as they switched from libstdc++ (GCC standard library) to libc++ (Clang standard library) as default which seems to solve tedious linking issues.
So, let's start with the installation of the dependencies. Firstly download and install MacPorts or Homebrew, after having installed Xcode Developer Tools and XCode Command Line Developer Tools (from the Apple Developer website).
The following steps will be using the port command from MacPorts, you may replace it with the brew equivalent if you are more of a Homebrew user. Note that compiling with the Homebrew versions of the libraries has not been tested, so please report issues (and ideally solutions as I do not have a Mac with Homebrew...).
With MacPorts, install the following packages:
sudo port install libtool cmake git pkgconfig gstreamer1 python35 gsl zmq glfw glm portaudio
With Homebrew, install the following packages:
brew install libtool cmake git pkgconfig gstreamer1 python45 gsl zmq homebrew/versions/glfw3 glm portaudio ffmpeg snappy libgphoto2
We then install Shmdata, which depends on GStreamer. Note that Shmdata is only needed if you want Splash to communicate with other Shmdata-compatible softwares. If you want to read video files or feed Splash through Syphon, you can skip this step.
git clone https://github.com/nicobou/shmdata
cd shmdata
./autogen.sh && ./configure
make && sudo make install
cd ..
Install all the other dependencies:
And then grab and install Splash:
git clone https://github.com/paperManu/splash
cd splash
git submodule update --init
mkdir -p build && cd build
cmake ..
make && sudo make install
You should now be able to launch Splash:
splash --help
It is also possible to create an app bundle automatically, the resulting bundle will be placed in the 'osx' subdirectory:
git clone https://github.com/paperManu/splash
cd splash
git submodule update --init
mkdir -p build && cd build
cmake ..
make && make package_osx
Remember that it is a very early port to OSX. Please report any issue you encounter!
To learn how to configure and use Splash, the best resource currently is the Wiki page on Github.