Let’s Glow SF 2023, San Francisco

Modulo Pi’s media servers on Let’s Glow SF 2023

USA’s largest holiday projection event, Let’s Glow SF, returned to San Francisco from December 1st through 10th for its third edition.

Every day from 5-10PM, the facades of Downtown San Francisco’s most iconic buildings were transformed through the projection of large-scale artworks created by local and international creative studios and artists.

A3 Visual worked with Modulo Pi’s media servers to do the projection mapping on 4 emblematic sites: The Pacific Coast Stock Exchange, PG&E Substation J, Hobart Building, and for the first time, The Ferry Building.

Teams of A3 Visual could rely on Modulo Kinetic’s 3D projection study tools to make the video mapping preparation and installation as smooth as possible. “We have 2 days to install 4 locations. Pre-building everything in Modulo Kinetic’s virtual environment allow us to get the 3D renders of each site and know exactly where to build things and where every projector is supposed to go” comments Sean Mason, CEO of A3 Visual Immersive Division. “It makes everything go a lot faster, plus the show is pre-programmed so once the projectors are up and have coverage, it’s fairly easy to map.”

The 4 buildings mapped required 14 x Panasonic projectors powered by the Modulo Player and Modulo Kinetic media servers.

Modulo Kinetic was behind the Ferry Building video mapping. A3 Visual found a 3D model of the historic landmark and verified its accuracy using laser measurement. Modulo Pi’s media server then allowed warping the outputs of the 3 x Panasonic PTRQ35K projectors, and perfectly map the building and its 245-foot-tall clock tower with artwork from artist Yann Nguema.

For the Pacific Stock Exchange, the install included 4 x Panasonic PTRQ35K and the Modulo Player media server. The exclusive X-Map functionality available in Modulo Pi’s media servers proved essential to achieve a proper video mapping on this edifice. “Stock Exchange was the hardest building because it has so many columns, so many spaces in between the columns, and we double-stack projectors there too, so we have to deal with the front and back layers” explains Sean Mason.

“We have to use X-Maps because then, we can map both projectors to converge them with Modulo Player on the back layer. We can’t do that with the projector. Without Modulo Player and the X-Map, the back layer would be blurry.”

This new successful edition of Let’s Glow SF was attended by 67,000 people. The festival of light will return in December 2024 for its fourth edition.