Teaching Ghosts to Dance
Last November we released a video on YouTube of the Halloween light show we did on our front lawn (see it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMqdTYzoeN8). Just recently, we began receiving numerous requests (on YouTube, forums and by email) to show you how we got the ghosts to pop-out from behind the tombstones. We’re more than happy to oblige. I just posted another video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrr_f5YjZbk) showing how we did it.
Haunted houses and Halloween lighting have always been a fascination of mine. I remember as a kid going to the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland for the first time. I was a curious boy (in more ways than one) and my father, who did visual effects in the motion picture business, declined to explain how any of it worked. Instead, he challenged to me figure it out by myself. By the time I was twelve, I had managed to figure most of it out and even put together simple drawings on how I might recreate them in our garage someday.
Unfortunately, my complete lack of skill when it came to things mechanical led to the eventual demise of my interest in creating animatronic ghosts which was replaced by something even more fascinating to me—I wanted to know how to control them using a computer. Constructing a cool looking ghost from wood, plastic and cloth was great, but the part I really wanted to do was teach that ghost how to dance.
VenueMagic 2.1 is actually the latest in a long line of lighting controllers. My early stuff was mostly hardware-based theater lighting controllers. They were simple programmable dimmers that were controlled by cues from a projector. Later I developed a simple script-based light controller that I used for haunted houses. VenueMagic 1.0 (released in June 2006) was my first attempt at DMX lighting control and it received quite a warm reception because of the unique way it used timelines to do lighting design and simplify the task of getting sound and lighting to work together in sync.
VenueMagic Halloween 2009 project
Despite years of experience doing show control and some animatronics (I even taught a robot to play the bagpipes once) It wasn’t until after the release of VenueMagic 2.0 that I finally got around to those spectral dance lessons I’d been waiting so long to teach.
What made it so easy to do in VenueMagic 2.0 was the ability to create a timeline whose sole purpose was to control a single pneumatic solenoid (along with some associated lighting effects), and then run that timeline repeatedly at precise locations in the main timeline. In fact, I created six such timelines, one for each ghost. Each ghost was a little different and each needed an air blast of a different duration between one-tenth and one-half of a second. Too little air and the ghost would not make it past the top of the tombstone. Too much and it would get blown off the top of the rod (right through the masking tape stopper) and into the trees above (sometimes the bushes). By dragging the mouse, I was able to quickly adjust effect clips in each timeline until the air blast duration was just right for each tombstone.
VenueMagic event track
On the main timeline, I placed timeline events (events that run timelines from within other timelines) precisely where I wanted them in sync with the music. I followed a similar procedure to control the solenoid valves that fed the pneumatic cylinders to open and close the coffin doors. Each door cylinder required two solenoid valves—one to let air in and open the door and one to let air out, allowing the spring to close it. The dancing skeletons were controlled by 80 rpm motors in the top of the coffins that simply shook them back and forth—sometimes too hard as we would occasionally find ourselves retrieving body parts that had flown off into the bushes to join the ghosts. These motors were also controlled by DMX switches.
Perhaps our greatest challenge with the ghosts was the strips of satin that formed their wispy, fluttering limbs. We had slightly frayed them at the end for effect and they were constantly unraveling and getting stuck on the rough, plywood edges of the tombstone frame. On one occasion a blast of air managed to dislodge the entangled appendage from the ghost’s head, a gruesome scene that was particularly disturbing to several of the little children who were watching.
All in all, we were pretty proud of our little Halloween light show. VenueMagic 2.0 performed flawlessly throughout the night, despite a few technical difficulties that included leaking air hoses and the growing mound of bone fragments at the bottom of each coffin. The recent release of VenueMagic 2.1, with additional features (and more to come) that better support animatronics, will open the door to much more interesting and sophisticated stuff. VenueMagic is capable of doing far more than we’ve been able to put together and we look forward to someone out there really giving VenueMagic 2.1 a run for its money.
Perhaps I’m still a bit shy of my childhood dream of recreating the Haunted Mansion in my garage, but at least now I know I’m a step closer—and I definitely have tools that will help me get there. Having at last managed to teach ghosts how to dance, perhaps my next adventure will be to teach them to climb out of trees. 
-Don Nolan
For more information about the VenueMagic show control software, visit: www.venuemagic.com.
11 Comments on Teaching Ghosts to Dance
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Hi,
Great software!! looks like what I need to do a real DMX controlled animatronic haunt show.
I have several DMX controlled Relays boards, DC Motor Boards, Servo Driver boards and stepper motor driver boards that I use in my shows.
Can I use these DMX boards with the software to add to the show and create an animatronic character to go along with the lighting and sound.?
How complex is it to create a custom fixture for the library that would represent these DMX devices?
Can input devices such as switches, sensors be patched into the software? and is so, is there a way to trigger the show playback from a remote sensor (PIR, trip beam sensor) connected to the computer USB port that would playback the VenueMagic recorded routine, reset and look for another sensor trip to start the show again (Looping type feature)
Thank You
Adding custom fixtures for just about for any type of DMX fixture is pretty simple. As an alternative, you could also use one of the “Generic” fixtures that are already in the library. These include generic “dimmer pack” fixtures with between 1 and 10 channels that can be used for just about anything.
VenueMagic currently supports input from MIDI controllers, DMX controllers and joysticks. Any of these may be used to cue timelines, and you can set it up to reset after the timeline has completed. We will also be adding serial (RS232/USB) input and output soon which will give you another option for input. Your PIR will have to go through one of those input channels. How were you planning on interfacing the PIR to the PC?
Looking at connecting the PIR sensor to a small interface board that reads the PIR trigger event and converts this event into a signal back to the USB port as an input event occurrence, similar to a joystick finger switch trigger. Software (VenueMagic maybe ) could then see this incoming event and trigger a playback.
Hi, was wondering
Is there a way to add a new menu pulldown in the Insert menu bar that would place a mechanical or device track. This track would be used for relays, motors, servos or devices not related to lighting, sound tracks, or is there a way to rename a track to represent the mechanical devices once a track has been inserted.
Thank you.
Is the PIR interface off-the-shelf? Send me a link and I’ll take a look at it. The lamp tracks are meant to be generic “device control” tracks. You can change the name of a track in the track’s property window.
Hi, I would like to automatically move a animatronic character mouth DMX servo in sync with a voice track. Can I do this using the Automatic Sync audio to a Lamp Chase method, If the voice track is set as the Master sync track and the servo track can be setup to act like a lamp chase in sync with the audio track?, or would there be a easier way to sync audio and DMX servo motion together.
Thank you
looking at some of these and maybe other boards as the possible sensor inputs to be used to trigger playback through RS-232 or USB input to the software
http://www.bpesolutions.com/sensoroduct.html#anchor99042
http://www.bpesolutions.com/sensoroduct.html#anchor824003
The Automatic Sync function is for locking a chaser to the beat of a song. What you should use is the Audio Link lighting effect (under Lamp Effects–>Generic in the project window). This will control the DMX channel with whatever audio clip the AL effect is linked to. It works somewhat like a light organ. Keep in mind that you may need to play with the AL’s gain and threshold channels to get what you want.
Hi
I’ve just found this forum and am using VenueMagic. How do you link the audiolink effect to an audio clip? Everytime I drag it onto the timeline under the audio it doesn’t do anything in the preview window.
Thanks
Link the audio and the AudioLink effect clips by selecting them both, right-clicking on one, and select Link Clips.
Robert, many years ago (Back in 2001) the way we handled it was by picking up a cheap MIDI keyboard controller, ripping it apart and hardwiring the PIR to a note. Break the beam and it fires off that note which in turn triggers whatever event / sequence you want to happen in DMX land. Granted we didn’t use this software to do it but I’m sure it can as it does take MIDI input.