Stage projection, 3D building maps, vehicle and product reveals, and full immersive rooms. Christie, Barco, Panasonic, and Epson projectors driven by disguise, Pixera, Resolume, and Notch — programmed and showcalled by the same crew that owns the gear.
Projection mapping is video projection that has been warped, masked, and color-corrected to land precisely on a non-flat surface — a building face, a stage set, a product, a sculpted scenic piece. Instead of showing a rectangle, the image becomes the object: edges align, windows light up on cue, ornament catches color. The trick is geometry, not pixel count.
The math changes depending on what's catching the light. Here are the four jobs we run most weeks.
Exterior building maps for premieres, brand reveals, civic activations, and album launches. We aim from a parking lot or rooftop, blend three to eight projectors, and warp content to architectural detail — windows, columns, signage, cornices.
Mapped scenic — angular truss builds, sculpted backdrops, geometric set pieces — that turn a flat stage into a dimensional canvas. Common for concerts, fashion shows, and product reveals where LED would feel too literal.
Cars, motorcycles, sneakers, bottles, prototypes. The hero object goes on a turntable or static plinth, projectors throw color and graphics directly onto the surface, and the reveal beats a screen every time. Ideal for auto and CPG launches.
Full-room immersion — walls, ceilings, floors, and sculpted scenic that wrap the audience. Multi-projector blends with edge warp, dynamic content driven by media server, sound-synced. Common for art installations, dinner experiences, and fashion runways.
Lumens determine what survives the ambient light. Three tiers cover most jobs. We stock all three and quote the right one for the surface size, throw distance, and room state.
Christie Boxer 4K30 · Panasonic PT-RQ50K
Top-tier brightness for exterior building maps and large daylight-adjacent rooms. The Boxer 4K30 puts down 30,000 lumens of clean 4K; the PT-RQ50K cracks 50,000 on a single chassis. Heavy, generator-friendly, and the units you stack when you need to punch through LA streetlight on a façade larger than 60 by 40 ft.
Barco UDX-4K32 · Christie Crimson HD25
Laser engines with strong contrast and a 20,000-hour light source. The UDX-4K32 is our default for indoor stage backdrops and mid-scale 3D mapping; the Crimson HD25 is the workhorse for sponsor activations and product reveals. Quieter than a lamp unit, faster on switch, and stable enough to ride a full festival weekend.
Panasonic PT-RZ31K · Epson Pro L30000U
Small footprint, fast deploy, perfect for indoor mapped scenic, brand activations, museum installs, and dinner-experience environments. The PT-RZ31K hits 31,000 lumens in a frame about a third the weight of the Boxer; the Epson Pro L30000U covers the budget-conscious end. Both run on standard 120V and lift on a single rigger.
Short / standard / long-throw lens kits · motorized yokes · ULA mounts
Every projector ships with three lens options as standard, so we adjust throw on the survey instead of swapping units. Motorized yokes, vertical and horizontal shift, and certified rigging hardware for venues that need a signed rigger. We stock truss adapters, cradle mounts, and floor-stand options for ground-up deploys.
Pixels are only as good as the server feeding them. We run five platforms and assign them by job — geometry complexity, content type, generative needs, and showcaller workflow.
Our default for any multi-projector blend or XR-adjacent job. The gx 2c and gx 3 chassis handle warp, blend, color management, and timecode in one box. Notch integration runs generative content live — particle systems, audio-reactive geometry, custom shaders — without a pre-render queue. Showfile builds in disguise Designer, with redundant playback and a hot-spare server on every event of that scale.
The platform we reach for on architecture-heavy 3D mapping. Pixera's UV-mapping pipeline and integrated 3D scene workflow make it faster than disguise for projects where the building geometry is the show. Strong tracking integration, NDI in / out, and a node-based compositor for live keying. We use Pixera Two and Pixera Four chassis depending on output count and the resolution headroom the show needs.
Live VJ and mid-scale stage backdrops where the operator is performing the show rather than running cues. Arena's clip-launch model and built-in effects chain make it the right call for club residencies, festival side stages, and sponsor zones. Lighter on hardware than disguise — we run Arena on a single ruggedized workstation with a Decklink Quad capture card and dual SDI out.
Real-time generative content engine. Runs inside disguise or stand-alone for custom interactive pieces — audio-reactive logos, particle reveals, camera-tracked AR overlays, brand-mapped 3D scenes. Our content team builds Notch blocks in-shop and hands them off to the showcaller. The same Notch project that drives the projection can drive an LED wall later — content portability is the win.
The node-based environment we use for one-off interactive builds — sensor-driven projection, OSC-controlled scenes, real-time data visualization mapped to scenic. TouchDesigner is overkill for a standard stage backdrop, but it's the right call when the brief calls for live data inputs, audience interaction, or generative architecture that has to respond to a feed in real time. We pair it with disguise or Pixera for final output and tracking.
Every mapping job runs the same six stages. Bigger builds spend longer on each step; smaller activations compress steps 2 and 3. The sequence does not change.
Walk the venue, measure throw distances, mark projector positions, log ambient light, identify rigging points and power taps. Half a day for a stage, a full day for a building façade. Photos and a sketch leave with the survey crew.
For 3D building maps and mapped scenic, we capture the surface — drone photogrammetry, LiDAR pass, or import from scenic CAD. The scan becomes the digital twin the content is built against. Accuracy here saves a calibration day on site.
Storyboard plus mood reel. Two passes — internal then client. We lock the story before any final render starts, so revisions cost storyboard cells, not rendered minutes.
Animated content runs against the digital twin in disguise Designer, Notch, or Unreal Engine. You see the show on the surface before truck call. Sign-off happens here.
On site. Projectors aim, mesh-warp to the surface, edge-blend overlap zones, color-match across units. One overnight pass for a stage, two for a building. Final QC against the storyboard before doors.
Live operation. Cues fire on timecode or showcaller call, redundant playback rolling, on-site programmer ready for hot edits. Same crew through strike.
Site survey runs one day for most LA venues — a half-day walk plus a half-day to write the rigging and power plan. Content build is the long pole: two to six weeks depending on scope, with custom 3D mapping content sitting at the longer end and stock-plus-edit jobs near the shorter. Pre-vis and revisions happen in week two of content build. On-site install runs one to three days — one day for a stage backdrop, two for a mid-scale 3D map, three for a full building plus immersive interior. The rule we tell new clients: when you book us six weeks out, you get full custom; when you book us two weeks out, we pick the projector tier that fits the date and pull from the stock content library to hit the deadline. Rush activations inside 72 hours are routine for single-projector jobs with supplied content.
Our LA dispatch covers every working venue and exterior wall from the harbor up through Pasadena. We know the rooftops for projector aim, the power taps for high-brightness lamps, and which neighborhoods need a city permit runner on day one.
We don't publish a rate card because two events with the same square footage rarely cost the same. What drives the number: pixel pitch (for LED), fixture density (for lighting), engine + camera count (for XR), permitting (for SFX), and how much load-in lives inside our 24-hour window. Tell us what you're building and we'll come back with a number engineered to it.
Want a directional estimate before you brief us? Run the LED Wall Calculator — it returns panel count, weight, power draw, and a band you can sense-check internally before you send us a brief.
Projection mapping shows up in every market we serve. Each page below covers crew scaling, lead times, and show-pattern specifics.
We start with discovery — a 20-minute call to understand the room, the run-of-show, and the look you're after. From there we do a site visit (or virtual walkthrough) to verify load-in, power, rigging points, and sightlines. That feeds an engineering document with fixture or panel counts, crew, transport, and any permitting. The fixed quote follows the engineering doc, line-itemed so you can see exactly where each number lands. No surprise add-ons after signature.
Rough math: target around 50 lumens per square foot for a dim indoor surface, 150 to 200 lumens per square foot for a bright indoor stage, and 400 to 600 lumens per square foot for an exterior building façade with ambient streetlight. A 40 by 25 ft building face under streetlight needs roughly 400,000 to 600,000 lumens delivered — usually four to six Christie Boxer 4K30 or Panasonic PT-RQ50K projectors stacked or edge-blended. We do the math on the survey, not in the catalog.
Both. Most clients arrive with a brief and a mood reel; our content team builds storyboards, pre-vis, and final renders, then drops them into the show file. If you have an existing edit, we color-correct it to the projectors, warp it to the surface, and timecode it to your music. Content build runs two to six weeks depending on scope. Last-minute jobs use stock-plus-custom blends to hit the date. See recent work for examples.
If the projection lands on a building you don't own or occupy, yes — you need consent from the property owner and, in most cases, a Film LA or city special events permit. Public right-of-way projections may require a temporary use permit. We handle the operational side, give you a clean lumens / dwell / aim diagram for the application, and coordinate with your permit runner. Plan four to eight weeks for a public-façade permit in LA.
Yes. Every mapping job at that scale ships with a storyboard pass, a 3D pre-vis in Cinema 4D or Unreal Engine, and a calibration test against the actual surface before show day. We build a digital twin of the venue from a 3D scan or scenic CAD and run the content against it in Notch or TouchDesigner. You see the show in pre-vis before we put a single projector on the truck.
For a single indoor surface with supplied content, two weeks is workable. For a building façade with custom content, plan four to eight weeks — the front half is survey, storyboard, and pre-vis; the back half is render, calibration, and tech rehearsal. Permit-heavy public projections add two to four weeks on the city side. Same-week rushes are possible for indoor stage work if we already have the venue surveyed.
