Houston’s First Baptist Church
25 Comments Published by Camron Ware - Visual Worshiper September 8th, 2008 in Visual WorshipOver the last month, I’ve had the privilege of being a part of the sanctuary re-model at Houston’s First Baptist Church. That is such a great facility with some highly fun and creative people! It was a pleasure to work with them.
I’ve been down a few times helping them implement architectural projection, and how to use that to create an environment for visual worship. Church Solutions Group got the gear installed and running properly, so props to them!
Houston’s First Baptist has the largest display of architectural projection that I’ve been a part of. There are (4) 15,000 ASNI lumen Sanyo’s shooting across the front of the sanctuary, in addition to (2) front projection Main Screens.
A Matrox DualHead2GoDigital is coming off a MacPro running ProVideoPlayer. Each output of the DualHead (Left and Right) then goes into a TVOne C2-1350 which splits each output image across two projectors. That gives us a total output resolution of 4096×768. (4) 1024×768 images can be stitched together to create a massive long image, and a software mask is applied over the competed images to blur the edges where needed.
My favorite part of the remodel was the use of the ceiling. I’ve been wanting a church to do something like this in correlation with architectural projection. There are (3) architectural rings that encompass the entire room with fabric stretched in between them. Above the fabric are LED bars that can light the entire ceiling with any color.
There is still some fine tuning to do, but even so these pictures do not do the mood and environment justice. Again, thank you to www.awakeimages.com for your amazing and beautiful imagery. See the pictures in full resolution here on Flickr.
25 Comments to “Houston’s First Baptist Church”
- 1 Pingback on Sep 15th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
- 2 Pingback on Sep 15th, 2008 at 3:42 pm
That’s crazy beautiful !
What an immersive dynamic space . . . to not only fill peoples peripheral vision with shapes and colors that complement a song or sermon, but to surround them with color from the ceiling is awesome. The entire congregation becomes a canvas to be painted on with light, making them part of the visual experience of worship.
That’s very cool.
Wow. I LOVE it!
Incredible. However, I still like your home church’s main projection screens “embedded” in the overall projection scheme.
And the projector specs…4 x 15,000 lumens!!!! Is this kind of architectural project project possible for smaller venues (like IBC’s Commons) with, say, 3,500~4,000 lumen projectors? If not, could these cheaper projectors be doubled up to deliver 7,000~8000 lumens to get the job done?
cw, you have the coolest job
Absolutely stunning.
So, I’ve been wondering what gear, software, etc you’re using for the IBC worship center. I’ll look for a blog post on that soon
Kevin; sure, the only real difference here is that they are doing (4) projectors. That presented a bit of a different setup using the Matrox box, because they only make a Triple and a Dual. But any projectors would work for this, depending on the room. Double-stacking is usually the cheapest way to get more lumens, but it’s not really quite “double”. Maybe 1.5.
Dale; yes…I would say I’m blessed with one of the coolest jobs.
Chris; you know you’re right! When you said tht I realized I need to show the setup that started all this for me…
Cam – good post, cool to see this happening around. What do you think of using high HIGH quality stretch screens (like we had in Zone), allowing the shape/size of canvases to change and grow? I know it’s TONS of work to set the projectors … I just like the idea that changing images still won’t feel static, and the screens could be layered to create some depth.
The ceiling is cool. Sometimes the colors look a little like an alien aircraft!
peace from Reno.
I like it! That would be VERY cool Shaun…depth is just as important as width. Not only does your image change, but your ’screen’ as well from week to week or whatever.
Hope you’re doing well man.
Ever have one of those moments where you stare at a picture of someone’s work, mouth wide open in awe? I’m having one of those! This is so good! Way to go Camron!
Don’t praise me, praise the Creator.
Camron… beautfiul work. Thanking our amazing God for people like you.
A technical question… Those 15,000-lumen Sanyo projectors appear to have a 1024 x 768 resolution. That seems pretty low when spread over large areas like this. Are there any guidelines for resolution in this application, or are lumens always king?
That looks amazing Cameron! good job. question about the ceiling… are those light streaks on the ceiling being projected? you mentioned led lighting for the ceiling. looks so good as if you are projecting a graphic up there???? is that the led lights hitting fabric draped towards the center ring?
Hey Bart; good to hear from you!
Yes, all the color you see in the ceiling in the pictures are from LED bars located right above the stretched fabric. It sort of “glows”.
I suggested to them maybe we should get 30 more projectors or and just project up there too! But I don’t think that was in the budget…
Kevin; the resolution is really ok even in this application. The surface being projected on has a texture to it anyway, so that, along with a couple other factors, make it look just fine. People aren’t right next to it, so you can’t tell it’s not super high resolution.
I’ve stuck with brightness/contrast, lens zoom ratio, and projector features as being the three most important projector factors to look at.
Camron, you continue to blow us away with your work! Amazing stuff. Awake Images really ‘gets it’. Love to see a link to the Sanyos you used.
How did you create the pano photos above? Are they stitches?
Yes, I took several shots of the room and then Photoshop merged them together for me.
What is being used to mask the images?
Pieces of cardboard cut out in front of the projectors?
Chris; actually they are using a mask built in Photoshop. It’s can very time-consuming though; I spent many hours rendering quadruple wide videos with the mask.
I’m still a huge fan of the physical mask; so much faster in designing visual looks. But; I’m curious though as to how the alpha channel module of ProPresenter will work for me…
Camron: I don’t think the Alpha Channel module in ProPresenter will benefit you in these kind of applications. The main functionality is to send out text with alpha via a Blackmagic Design **video card** (SDI, component signal) to a video switcher/mixer for compositing with video.
For your applications that use VGA/DVI output with a Matrox TripleHead2Go (**This box can also be set to drive **two** monitors, so you don’t have to pick up a DualHead2Go for experimenting**), the Alpha Channel module will give you no extra capabilities that I am aware of.
Here’s how ProPresenter’s layers “stack up”
>top>
Countdown
Announcement
Foreground (song lyrics, scripture, movies)
Background (graphics, movies)
Video (live video via FireWire, USB, or PCIe card)
>bottom<
ProPresenter **can** provide real-time masking for VGA/DVI output for a **live video** source (resolutions from 640 x 480 up to 1920 x 1080) with a PNG mask file imported into the Backgrounds pane. Unfortunately, there is currently only one background layer available, so you can’t real-time mask a graphic or movie. If there were two background layers available (Background Background Mask), then it should be possible. Alternatively, maybe a “universal mask” above the countdown layer would be the best for your application.
camron,
awesome stuff…if my neighbor projected on his house like that i’d call the cops. ha!
seriously, we loved our time with you in houston and i’m talking about you to everyone all over the country.
peace and more to you,
dave miller | church relations
dave@churchsolutionsgroup.com
People should read this.