Kivex

Firstly, thanks to anyone who goes out of their way to write me a reply. Much appreciated!

After doing a bit of research and getting a little lost, I want to know if Max/MSP is the best method of achieving this effect.

A rough guideline as to what coding/software I should be looking into so I can take it from there would be very helpful.

I'm a capable mapper, motion designer & ableton user so its the interlinking of projection mapping being activated by laser pointers and triggering midi messages that stumps me! I only stumbled across MaxMSP today so scuse my lack of knowledge regarding the programs capabilities

I saw this video:
http://vimeo.com/37920250

I'm a capable mapper, motion designer & ableton user so its the interlinking of projection mapping being activated by laser pointers and triggering midi messages that stumps me! I only stumbled across MaxMSP today so scuse my lack of knowledge regarding the programs capabilities 

using-maxmsp-to-create-an-instrument-using-laser-pointers-projection-maps

start with jit.findbounds to get your feet wet, it's one-point only. A camera to pick up the laser color. Use that to get the MIDI triggering etc. worked out. probably just send the MIDI to Abelton to use its sound library. no need for Max4Live, though you can play with that too if you want...

Then move to cv.jit objects, and use cv.jit.touches for multiple points. You'll need to have the laser color be somewhat brighter than the scene AND the projection highlighting (if you use that), because otherwise cv.jit will pick up the lightness too...you need to be able to distinguish the points by themselves.

Tap.tools package has an object like jit.findbounds which can track a specific color, but can do up to 4 at once. So that might be an option too, if you limit to 4. Tracking the specific color will work better than overall light level like cv.jit, in this case, because the laser color is so prominent.

Max is a great environment to build interactive real-time applications, and if you can find the necessary hardware needed to track the lasers, and if that hardware has software that can somehow translate the real-world data into OSC or MIDI, then Max is perfect.

The only downfall is if the hardware/technique used to track the lasers doesn't have commercial translation software, (likely), you would have to translate the messages yourself, in which case I'm afraid you will (probably) have to delve into the world of C.

I will say though, I don't know how they are tracking the lasers. If you have any clue please share and I'll be able to offer more info. If you don't know how they are doing it the only thing I can think of that can pull it off entirely in Max is possibly (but very unlikely) the cv.jit library (computer vision) whereby Max might be able to pick up on the color of the laser pointers through a camera (a very good camera at that), but very unlikely.

The only downfall is if the hardware/technique used to track the lasers doesn't have commercial translation software, (likely),  you would have to translate the messages yourself, in which case I'm afraid you will (probably) have to delve into the world of C. 

Using MaxMSP to create an instrument using laser pointers & projection maps