The Neon Museum in Las Vegas, Nev., has debuted Brilliant!, a 30-minute after-dark audiovisual (AV) show in its north gallery that uses digital projection mapping to re-animate 40 of its iconic vintage signs.
To visitors immersed in the 360-degree experience, the unrestored, non-working and even broken signs appear to be suddenly re-electrified. Digital artist and designer Craig Winslow used a combination of photos, video and three-dimensional (3-D) photogrammetry as references to recreate each sign, bulb by bulb, in Adobe Illustrator software. He then used structured light scanning to obtain a precise view of the digital projectors and fine-tuned the content to align to the actual surfaces throughout the gallery.
“This is truly a first,” says Rob McCoy, the museum’s president and CEO. “Nowhere on the planet has anyone attempted to create this effect.”
“It is an honour to be able to give people a chance to see these signs exactly as they used to be,” says Winslow.
