Software | Release Version | Icon |
|---|---|---|
Igloo Warper | 1.17.0 |  |
Function:
Igloo Warper is an application that provides a canvas for the playback of images, videos and a variety of other content types. Igloo Warper also Warps and Blends the output, fitting the canvas to any shaped screen, geometrically correcting the warped image, and allowing for multiple projectors to be seamlessly blended together if there’s an overlap in projection.
The User Interface:
Many items in the user interface can cause dramatic changes to the canvas. It’s advisable to make a backup of the IglooWarper folder at %localappdata%\IglooWarper as shown below
Settings that may dramatically change the operation of the Igloo will be marked in these boxes and it’s advised these settings are not changed without consultation from the Igloo support team
The Warper user interface contains 3 main sections: a menu bar, a canvas preview, and a playhead bar (applicable only when playing back videos).
File:
The file dropdown has a single item, save, which automatically saves all warper settings when hovered over with a mouse:
Config:
The config dropdown has a few items; Controller, High Performance Warping, Timing, Audio, Window, and Communication.
Hovering over any item will bring up another context menu. The controller menu covers the relevant settings for using game controllers such as the steam controller, and also covers the relevant settings for sending gyroscope data to game engines
Type: Contains a list of valid controller types. Types are None, XIMU, DS4 (For use with Playstation’s DualShock 4 controllers), GYRO_OSC (For use with the mobile application Gyro OSC), IGLOO_REMOTE (For use with Igloo Touch), STEAM (for use with the discontinued Steam Controller), and OPEN_VR (For use with VR wand-style controllers)
Gyroscope to Wrap: Allows the gyroscope data to be used to rotate the content on the canvas. Below axis settings allows the data to wrap in different directions
Invert: Inverts the effect the Gyroscope data has on Game-Engine cursor controls.
Use the invert controls if rotating your controller left causes the cursor to move right, etc
Mapping: Allows the yaw, pitch, and roll rotation of a game controller to be mapped to different axes inside the game engine
Annotation: Enabled allows for the annotation of the Igloo Canvas using the specified controller. The colour of the annotation can be edited using a standard RGB (255,255,255) scheme
Messages: Defines which controller inputs are handled by the warper
In most cases the buttons, triggers, pads, and sticks messages will be unticked, as these are handled by the game engine directly
Frequencies: Defines how frequently the Igloo Warper checks the message types for changes in state
High Performance Warping: Used for black level correction (beta) and Scalable auto warping.
If Scalable is enabled when a Scalable system is not in place, this will cause an immediate crash to desktop
Timing: Allows the monitoring of movie and application FPS and defines the framerate cap of the Igloo Warper application (0 is uncapped).
Adaptive framerate: Attempts to match the application framerate to the movie’s
Audio: Allows the definition of a delay between the audio and visuals
Use this if your speakers are extremely far away from the screen
Window: Allows the definition of the width of a window, and the number of projectors in the system
Note that reducing the number of projectors or increasing the number of columns of rows will reset your warps completely.
Cols & Rows: Defines the number of control points on each projectors warp grid for finer adjustment
Communication: Defines the ports that Igloo Warper sends and receives messages on
Changing the input and output ports can disrupt the communication flow of the entire Igloo software suite. Changing these without consulting the Igloo support team is not advised.
Blending:
Overlaps: Defines the percentage of the content that is repeated at the given edge of the screen
Adjusting this on a well warped system will throw your blend areas out of alignment
Width: Defines the size of the canvas that affected by the gamma correction
Gamma: Defines the intensity of the colour correction. Lower numbers result in darker areas
Rotation degrees: Specific to circular or semicircular warping, rotates the entire mesh clockwise against the defined rotation amount.
View:
Change settings specific to how the canvas is viewed
Warp: Defines whether warping is turned on, or off.
Warping should to be on if projecting onto curved surfaces, or flat surfaces where the projector isn’t perfectly aligned with the surface
Blend: Defines whether blending is turned on, or off
Blending should be turned off if there’s no overlap between projectors
Show test image: Shows/Hides one of the Igloo full-canvas test images to check alignment
Info: Shows/Hides the info panels which denote screen number and the application framerate, as well as the “active screen” when warping
Show Control Points: Shows/Hides the control points which are used to manipulate the mesh
Full Screen: Places the Warper canvas in fullscreen, or brings the Warper canvas to the terminal display for debugging purposes.
Note that while the Warper canvas is on the terminal display, the inside of an Igloo will be displaying the desktop, instead of the selected content
Mask Layers: Masks allow regions of the screen to be black, instead of displaying content. These masks are separated into 2 layers that can be enabled and disabled independently.
Stereo: Turns on and off Side-by-Side Stereo 3D conversion.
Y offset: Moves the entire content mesh up, or down
This can be used to view content that has been stretched off screen, such as to view the floor or ceiling view of an equirectangular piece of content
Global Wrap: Rotates the entire canvas clockwise as the value increases
Wrap rate: Continuously rotates the entire canvas clockwise. Speed of the rotation increases as the value does
Layers:
Allows settings to be applied to any input on a given layer, and allows the order of the layers to be defined.
The three layers, Movie, External Applications and Capture inputs, can all exist at the same time. The “top most” layer on a given portion of the canvas is the one that will be displayed. The Capture Inputs Layer (Inputs from the Igloo Capture Application) is always the “top” layer meaning that Capture inputs will be overlayed on the movie layer such that, when the inputs are not full screen, the lower layers can still be seen in the portions of the canvas the inputs don’t cover.
Movie → wrap: Defines the wrap position for everything on the movie layer (videos, images). Can be used instead of Global Wrap if the wrap position shouldn’t impact the other layers.
Capture inputs: This context menu provides a list of inputs with settings for each.
Enabled: Determines whether or not the input is shown on the canvas
Position: 2 normalised values representing the x and y position on the canvas that the input starts being drawn to (i.e, the top left corner of the input will be at this position on the canvas)
Size: 1 normalised value that scales the width and height by the same amount, maintaining the aspect ratio
Scale Factor: 2 normalised values that scale the width and height respectively. Can stretch by increasing the value above 1
Wrap: As above for movie layer, but for individual capture inputs:
Play and Pause: Controls for Video inputs. Plays or pauses the video playback
Inverted and Flipped: Mirrors the input on the x and y axes
Canvas width: When enabled, stretches the input to fill the entire canvas
Alpha: When enabled, turns any alpha textures on the input transparent.
Note the capture input on the left of the above screenshot has Alpha enabled, meaning you can see the movie layer behind the image. Conversely, the Igloo Logo has a flat white background with no transparency
Z Level & Bring to front, send to back: Changes the order of the inputs - an input with a “higher” Z level will display “on top” of inputs with a “lower” Z level
External Application Inputs: External inputs share many of the same settings with Capture Inputs
Fish Eye Strength: Distortion applied on the x and y value respectively to mimic the effect of a fisheye camera
Because the Igloo camera rig consists of 5 (or 6) perspective cameras, some distortion on the Y-Axis can make hard edges look more rounded and natural for use in cylinders and domes. A value of 0.09 is usually sufficient
Order & Startup: Sets the order of the layers, allowing the movie layer and external application inputs layer to be switched. Startup allows you to save these settings to Load on Warper start.
This would allow a Unity/Unreal project to be the first thing displaying on the Warper launch
Media Folders:
Allows the definition of folders that images and videos are stored
Media Files:
Shows a list of all available images and videos that a user can click on to play.
When media is played this way it will retain any clip-based settings applied to the previously played clip. Clips must be played through Igloo Control in order to use settings exclusive to that file
Play:
Contains playback controls such as Play, pause, stop, etc. Also here, the startup behaviour can be set to play a movie immediately when Igloo Warper opens.
Keep last frame: Holds the last frame of the video on the canvas when the video ends, instead of showing a black screen
Movie Background Colour: Sets the colour of the canvas that isn’t showing the content
A full HD resolution film may not fill the canvas if set not to stretch. The remaining canvas will display the movie background colour.
Auto Canvas Average Colour: Takes an average of all the colours from the content and sets that as the movie background colour
Output:
Allows the sharing of the Warper Canvas over Spout and NDI. Allows the creation of screenshots and .mov files from the Warper canvas.
Help:
Shows licensing information, Software versioning, and provides a shortcut to the Warper settings folder
Folder path for settings: %localappdata%\”Igloo Vision”\IglooWarper
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