Projection Mapper - Easily warping your desktop
I am currently working on setting up an interactive table to work for my Game Design class. After much struggling with the placement of the projector and a mirror inside the table box... I concluded that my projector is simply not going to be able to deal with the keystone effect by itself. So, since life is going to be difficult enough for the students just dealing with the interactive part of the table I thought that they should not worry about perspective correction issues.
After talking to a colleague of mine I learned about a tool named MadMapper for mac that can be used in these cases, and a great resource, www.projectorcentral.com, in which I may be able to find some simple piece of software that would do the job for me. The truth is there are some tools that do that... and a lot more... for a (not so) reduced price. Interestingly, I though I was looking for a very trivial tool that would just do a simple perspective correction but all I found is amazingly sophisticated to create 3D projection mapping, VJing and spatial augmented reality. So, after spending one afternoon looking for a solution and trying out very complex trial demos... I decided to spend one afternoon just coding a simple program with OpenCV that would do the job.
Projection mapper is a very simple tool for MS Windows that is designed to aid in the creation of interactive installations or any other situation that requires the use of projections at very difficult angles. In these cases the projector keystone correction is generally insufficient and the perspective warping needs to be done via software. Projection Mapper basically reads the primary screen buffer and allows you to project it and correct the perspective via software on a secondary monitor.
Download Projection Mapper from NeurorehabLab Tools - Overview (m-iti.org)
Comments
Be aware that primary and secondary monitors need to have the exact same resolution for it to work.
Is it possible to use the mouse on the screen that has been calibrated? If I tab out of the program then it goes back to the original settings, but otherwise I can't use the mouse without changing the calibration again.
Maybe you can try this software "spot the mouse" to see if it helps in combination with projection mapper: http://www.snapfiles.com/downloads/spotmouse/dlspotmouse.html