VJ UNION

Michael Jackson Hologram, Dhaka 2026: A Technical Director's Account of the Show | MJ Tribute by Warfaze

Zunayed Sabbir Ahmed — Sat, 22 Aug 2026 16:20:28 +0000

Recreating A Childhood 1993 Super Bowl Moment, On Stage

I grew up rewinding the same VHS clip of Michael Jackson's 1993 Super Bowl halftime show more times than I can count. I never imagined I'd get to help bring a piece of that moment back to life — on a stage in Dhaka, using the exact craft I've spent my career building. This is that story: the role, the idea, and the five weeks it took to get there.

By Zunayed Sabbir Ahmed · Technical Director & Producer, Studio Z · Warfaze × Michael Jackson Tribute, 31 July 2026, Hall of Fame, BICC, Dhaka

Tipu Bhai mentioned my name to the agency, and that's how I first heard about this project. The agency already had good chemistry with Studio Z — we'd worked together on other historic Bangla concerts before this one — so it wasn't a hard conversation to have. What made it hard was everything that came after — figuring out how to bring Michael Jackson back to a stage in Dhaka, live, in front of thousands of people, with a fraction of the time and budget the moment I grew up watching once had.

Because that's really what this project was for me. Somewhere under the riders and the colour guides and the load-in schedule was a kid who used to imitate that 1993 Super Bowl entrance in front of a mirror. Twenty-odd years later, immersive production — the craft I now do for a living — gave me a way to help put a version of that moment on a real stage. This post is about three things, in order: the role I held on this show, the idea we built around, and the production that got it from a document to a lit stage in five weeks.

Chapter 01 — The Role

"Technical Director" gets used loosely in this industry, so let me define it the way it actually worked on this show. I owned the technical side of the production — visuals, lighting coordination, LED, sound patching, video, and the choreography-to-content bridge — end to end. Everything else — venue check-in and check-out, vendor payments, contracts, ticketing, sponsor obligations, department scheduling — sat with the event management team. I want to be precise about that split, because it's the whole job description: a technical director doesn't run the event. A technical director makes sure every technical department is speaking the same language about the same show, at the same time, without anyone finding out the hard way that they weren't.

Studio Z was also the production company delivering the visual layer — animated key visual CGI, custom song content for every track, a live VJ set, the media server and its backup, and the holographic segment itself. So on this one I was wearing both hats: producer of my own company's deliverables, and technical director coordinating everyone else's.

Lighting, LED, sound, video and choreography were each run by their own crew, on their own console, in their own vocabulary. My job was to turn "make it feel like Smooth Criminal" into something a lighting desk and a video rig could both execute without a phone call. That turned out to be less about creative direction and more about documentation — which I'll get to in the production chapter, because it's the part of this job nobody sees and the part I'd argue mattered most.

Chapter 02 — The Concept

The idea itself is simple to say and hard to deliver: put Michael Jackson back on a stage, live, for 180 seconds, using a holographic illusion — not a projected backdrop, not a video tribute, an illusion that a room full of people experiences as a live event happening in front of them.

There's exactly one prior reference point worth naming. On 18 May 2014, at the Billboard Music Awards in the MGM Grand Garden Arena, a Michael Jackson illusion performed "Slave to the Rhythm" — sixteen live dancers, a full band, directed by Jamie King, backed by the Michael Jackson Estate, built over nearly six months. It's still one of the most talked-about stage illusions ever produced, and it's the honest comparison point for what we did in Dhaka twelve years later.

The scale wasn't comparable. The idea was.

Las Vegas 2014: Hollywood director, the artist's own Estate, six months of build time.

Dhaka 2026: a small studio, a locked lighting cue, and five weeks.

Here's the part people don't expect: a holographic illusion isn't a visual effect. It's a light agreement. For those 180 seconds to hold, the lighting console has to sit in an exact state — no follow spots wandering into the frame. Camera operators have to respect a boundary that isn't marked anywhere on the floor. The dancer has to stay inside a line that exists only in a rehearsal note. The audio cue has to land on the frame, not near it. Every department gives something up so the illusion can hold. None of that shows on stage. What shows is a legend's most recognisable gestures happening again, live, in a room that wasn't told to expect it.

"Most of what people assume is a budget problem is actually a rehearsal problem."
— on comparing Vegas 2014 to Dhaka 2026

The concept also had to survive a moving setlist. The MJ set started as a 19-song bank. By the time the band locked it — five days before the show — it had become 16 songs, with three additions that had never appeared in any earlier version at all: Human Nature, The Way You Make Me Feel, and We Are the World. Those three entered with zero prepared content, zero locked palette, zero choreography note. Building a concept that can absorb that kind of change five days out is its own discipline, and it's the bridge into the next chapter.

180s — the illusion · 16 — MJ songs, final · Thousands — people in the room, venue full · 5 — weeks, concept to stage

Chapter 03 — The Production

If the concept is the idea, production is everything that has to be true before the idea is allowed on stage. On this show that meant building a documentation pipeline that six different departments could all read from without ever needing to ask each other a clarifying question.

Building the illusion in 3D before it existed anywhere else

Before any of it touched a stage, it existed as a full 3D previsualisation of the Hall of Fame venue — LED wall, truss positions, fixture throw, runway, audience geometry — and, separately, as a 3D model of Michael Jackson built and refined inside our editing software for the holographic content itself. That model is where costume, silhouette, and movement got tested and approved before a single frame went to render. Previz isn't there to produce a pretty image. It's there to settle arguments before they happen on a load-in day, when settling them costs money and time nobody has.

The shoot: greenscreen, a dancer, and one chance to get the reference right

The holographic content itself was shot on a dedicated greenscreen stage, with the choreography team handling both the movement for the MJ set and the holographic content shoot as one continuous process — no handoff gap between the person setting the movement and the person capturing it. Every gesture that later reads as "Michael Jackson, live" on stage in Dhaka was blocked, rehearsed, and shot here first — matched frame by frame against the 3D reference model built in our editing software, where costume, silhouette, and movement got approved before a single frame went to render.

The build behind the illusion — the greenscreen shoot and the 3D reference model, side by side.

Documentation as the actual deliverable

Here's what most people never see, and what I'd argue was the most important thing built on this entire project: a stack of documents, in order, none of them creative.

Technical riders per department, distributed 11 July.
A costume reference — desktop, mobile, and printable editions.
A VJ & Lighting Colour Guide, through three revisions, giving the lighting console and the video rig the same locked palette for every song.
A choreography guide for the dance team, with unconfirmed slots explicitly flagged rather than left blank.
Final visual notes covering fresh research for the five songs added late.
An all-party technical briefing, 28 July.
One consolidated Show Guide Book, 30 July — so nobody was opening six separate files on show day.

A colour palette is a contract. It's the difference between telling a lighting engineer "make it feel like Smooth Criminal" and handing him a value his console can execute — the same value the video rig is reading at the same moment. That's not creative direction. That's translation, and it's what actually keeps six departments in sync across a five-week build.

The timeline

Late June: early setlist notes and colour guide v1. Early July: riders begin. 11 July: riders distributed. 22 July: riders confirmed, colour guide at v3. 26 July: setlist locked — in two separate meetings, one for the MJ set, one for Warfaze's own. 28 July: the all-party briefing. 30 July: the Show Guide Book goes out. 31 July: the show.

Chapter 04 — The Night Itself

The illusion ran. Michael appeared, live, on a holographic screen, in the exact costume from his 1993 Super Bowl performance — the same costume from the same clip I used to rewind as a kid — then multiplied into several figures moving in the same choreography, then vanished into a single spotlight where a real performer, Michael Imran, stood exactly where the hologram had been. Standing at the console watching that costume appear was, honestly, a strange full-circle moment for me. Channel 24 covered it that night. Their headline, translated, said it plainly: it was as if Michael Jackson had returned to the Warfaze stage. Reading that the next morning meant more to me than most reviews I've had.

Show night.

What I Took From This One

Documentation is the deliverable. The Show Guide Book was the most important thing produced on this project, and it contains no creative work at all.
A colour palette is a contract. It turns a feeling into a value two different consoles can execute without a phone call.
Scale is not the same as ambition. Las Vegas had six months and an Estate behind it. Dhaka had a small team and a locked cue. The idea travelled anyway.
A holographic illusion is a light agreement, not a visual effect. Every department gives something up so 180 seconds can hold.
Some projects are personal before they're professional. I've built plenty of shows. This one happened to sit on top of a childhood memory, and that changed how much it mattered to get right.

Questions People Ask

What does a technical director actually do on a concert like this?
Owns the technical side of the show — lighting coordination, LED, sound patching, video, and content — end to end, translating a creative brief into specifications every department's console can execute in sync. Operations, finance, and venue logistics sit separately with the event management team.

Was the Michael Jackson segment a real hologram?
It was a live holographic illusion — a real-time technique that placed a holographic Michael Jackson on stage in front of the audience, distinct from pre-recorded video or a body double alone.

How does this compare to Michael Jackson's 2014 Las Vegas hologram?
The 2014 Billboard Music Awards illusion was built over roughly six months by a Hollywood team backed by the Michael Jackson Estate. The 2026 Dhaka illusion was designed and delivered by a small studio at a fraction of the scale and budget, in about five weeks — the same core idea, arriving in Bangladesh for the first time.

Who performed as Michael Jackson?
Michael Imran, previously featured as Michael Jackson on Ityadi, Bangladesh's longest-running television magazine programme, and in the Jump Keds television commercial.

Building A Show Like This

If your next project needs a technical director who thinks in documentation as much as in light — riders, colour guides, previz, and a single show guide book that keeps every department honest — let's talk.

Get In Touch

I love surprises very much, and this surprise is a good one! Its real, its believable, you can walk across the room and touch it.

vdmo — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 15:52:14 +0000

What Resolution Do VJs Actually Use — 2026 Data and a Ten-Year Forecast.

Alexander Kuiava — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 14:21:59 +0000

In July 2022 I asked 567 VJs which resolution they mostly use. Sixty-five per cent said Full HD 1920×1080. Two per cent said 8K. I re-ran the poll on 30 July 2026 across our Telegram channel and our Facebook community. Full HD lost its majority. It now sits somewhere between 34% and 41% depending on which platform you ask, and the 4K family has overtaken it. That is a larger move than I expected. Consequently this article now carries both data sets, the four-year comparison, and an honest account of where the two polls disagree — because they disagree in a way that is more interesting than either number on its own.

Who this article is for: VJs and motion designers deciding what to render, content producers deciding what to stock, and technical directors specifying a show.

What it solves: everyone assumes resolution goes up over time. In this industry it does not go up uniformly — it splits, and the split is the whole story.

What you get by the end: both polls side by side, the arithmetic that tells you what resolution a screen can actually display, why architectural mapping and immersive interiors are moving in opposite directions, how geography changes the answer, and a forecast to 2036 with reasoning you can check.

Hello dear VJs and clients of LIME ART GROUP. I am new media artist Alexander Kuiava. I run these polls periodically because our own production planning depends on the answer — what we render, we have to sell.

Full article read here:
https://limeartgroup.com/what-is-the-most-commonly-used-resolution-in-vjing/

How to Learn MadMapper 6 From Scratch: The Honest Beginner's Roadmap

Zunayed Sabbir Ahmed — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 11:03:50 +0000

In 2014, Michael Jackson walked back onto a stage in Las Vegas, five years after his death. Gold jacket, red trousers, sixteen live dancers, a live band. The Billboard Music Awards, MGM Grand Garden Arena. It took nearly six months to build, a Hollywood production team, and the full backing of the Michael Jackson Estate. For a few minutes, an audience stopped being sure what it was looking at.

Twelve years later, I sat in Dhaka with a setlist, a three-person team, and a question: can we bring that idea here — not the budget, not the Estate, not the six months — just the idea?

On 31 July 2026, at a 2,500-capacity venue in Dhaka, we did. A 180-second live holographic illusion, performed in real time in the room. The first time it's been done on a concert stage in Bangladesh.

This is the story of how, and what it teaches anyone trying to pull off something similar without a Vegas budget.

THE BRIEF

The show was a Michael Jackson tribute performed by Warfaze — Bangladesh's most influential heavy metal band, 42 years into their career, playing MJ's catalogue for two hours before switching into their own material for a third. The event was organized under Brandmyth Limited & Mars & Co., who ran the commercial and operational side — venue, contracts, ticketing, sponsor obligations. I was brought in as Technical Director, responsible for everything on the technical side: lighting, LED, sound coordination, camera, choreography timing, and the visual content — including a holographic segment nobody in this market had attempted at this scale before.

I didn't pitch for the job. The band's leader recommended me directly, and the agency already knew my work from earlier projects. That meant I walked in without having to prove I belonged in the room — which let me spend the actual runway on the hard problem instead of the easy one.

The hard problem was this: Michael Jackson's music is built on dense studio production — layers of synth, almost no guitar — and it had to be reshaped into a rock band's voice while still being unmistakably him. That tension had to show up in every layer I controlled: light, image, motion, timing.

WHY A HOLOGRAM, AND WHY IT'S HARDER THAN IT LOOKS

Everyone assumes a holographic illusion is a visual effect — something you build once and drop into a show. It isn't. It's an agreement between departments.

A hologram illusion of this kind only exists inside one exact lighting condition. Break that condition for even a second and the illusion collapses. Which means for those 180 seconds, every other department has to give something up simultaneously:

The lighting console has to hit an exact state and hold it — no adjustments, no reactive cues.
Follow spot operators have to not do the thing follow spot operators instinctively do.
The camera team has to know precisely where they can and cannot stand.
Choreography has to keep performers inside a boundary the audience can't see but the optics can't forgive.
The audio cue has to land exactly on the frame, not near it.

None of that happens by accident on the night. It has to exist on paper — in the technical riders, the cue sheet, the choreography notes — a month before it exists on a stage. By the time we got to load-in, that 180-second window had already been negotiated, in writing, by six departments who had never worked together before.

That's the actual skill in delivering a moment like this. Not the hologram hardware. The choreography of restraint across an entire production team.

BUILDING THE ROOM BEFORE THE ROOM EXISTS

Previsualization is how you find out a follow spot is blocked, or a projector throw clips a truss, or a performer's entry path crosses a cable run — in a file, weeks out, instead of on load-in day with seven crews standing around waiting for you to solve it live.

When the lighting engineer, the LED engineer, and the choreographer are all looking at the same 3D frame, the conversation stops being an opinion and starts being a fact everyone can see.

THE DOCUMENT THAT DID THE ACTUAL WORK

If you asked me what technical direction looks like on paper, I'd point to one document: a locked, per-song colour guide, built across three revisions, used simultaneously by the lighting console and the video system.

It sounds unglamorous. It's the reason the show worked. Instead of two departments guessing what "make it feel like Smooth Criminal" means in the room, in real time, under pressure — they had a value they'd already agreed on a month earlier. A colour palette, in writing, is a contract. It turns a subjective creative instruction into something two separate operators can execute independently and still land in the same place.

Everything else — the tech riders, the choreography guide, the final consolidated show reference built the night before the event — existed to do the same job: make sure "ready" meant the same thing to every department in the building.

WHAT I LEARNED

Scale is not the same as ambition. Las Vegas had six months and an estate behind it. We had a small team and a locked lighting cue. The idea traveled anyway. Most of what people assume is a budget problem is actually a rehearsal and documentation problem.

Documentation is the deliverable. Nobody aligns six departments because you're persuasive in a meeting. They align because there's a specific, dated document and everyone has read the same sentence.

A holographic illusion is a discipline problem before it's a technology problem. The gear is the easy part. Getting five other departments to give something up, in perfect sync, for three minutes — that's the job.

If the idea is strong enough, the market doesn't matter. Nobody had put a live hologram on a concert stage in Bangladesh. That wasn't a reason to avoid it. It was the reason to do it.

FAQ

What does a technical director actually do on a show like this?
A technical director is the single point of accountability for the technical output of a live show — making sure lighting, LED, sound, camera, choreography, and visual content all execute against the same cues, in the same room, with no second take. It's distinct from creative direction and separate from production management, which typically handles budgets, venue, and logistics.

What is a live holographic illusion, technically speaking?
It's a stage illusion created through a precise combination of projection, lighting control, and screen technology that creates the impression of a three-dimensional figure performing live. It depends entirely on a controlled lighting environment — if any other light source breaks that condition, the illusion fails.

Who was the technical director behind this?
Zunayed Sabbir Ahmed, a technical director and VJ based in Dhaka, Bangladesh, working internationally on concerts, holographic productions, and large-scale AV shows. This production was organized in partnership with Brandmyth Limited & Mars & Co.

Has a live hologram been done on a concert stage in Bangladesh before?
No — this was the first time. Michael Jackson's own hologram debut was in 2014 at the Billboard Music Awards in Las Vegas, backed by a six-month production timeline and the Michael Jackson Estate.

Can this be done on a smaller budget than a Vegas-scale production?
Yes. The core requirement isn't budget — it's discipline. Previsualization, a locked cue structure, and a documentation chain that every department actually reads are what make an illusion like this reliable, regardless of production scale.

If you're planning a show that needs this level of technical coordination — a concert, a product launch, a brand activation — anywhere in the world, this is the kind of problem I like being handed.

Written by Zunayed Sabbir Ahmed — Technical Director & VJ, based in Dhaka, Bangladesh, working internationally.

MJ came back from the dead again in 2026 — this time in Dhaka. Here's how we pulled it off.

Zunayed Sabbir Ahmed — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 05:28:33 +0000

Twelve years later, I sat in Dhaka with a setlist, a three-person team, and a question: can we bring that idea here — not the budget, not the Estate, not the six months — just the idea?

This is the story of how, and what it teaches anyone trying to pull off something similar without a Vegas budget.

THE BRIEF

WHY A HOLOGRAM, AND WHY IT'S HARDER THAN IT LOOKS

Everyone assumes a holographic illusion is a visual effect — something you build once and drop into a show. It isn't. It's an agreement between departments.

That's the actual skill in delivering a moment like this. Not the hologram hardware. The choreography of restraint across an entire production team.

BUILDING THE ROOM BEFORE THE ROOM EXISTS

Before a single truss went up, the entire stage existed in 3D — LED wall, truss and fixture positions, sightlines, the light throw, the audience geometry. Not for a nice render. For settling arguments before they happened on the floor.

Previsualization is how you find out a follow spot is blocked, or a projector throw clips a truss, or a performer's entry path crosses a cable run — in a file, weeks out, instead of on load-in day with seven crews standing around waiting for you to solve it live.

When the lighting engineer, the LED engineer, and the choreographer are all looking at the same 3D frame, the conversation stops being an opinion and starts being a fact everyone can see.

THE DOCUMENT THAT DID THE ACTUAL WORK

WHAT I LEARNED

Documentation is the deliverable. Nobody aligns six departments because you're persuasive in a meeting. They align because there's a specific, dated document and everyone has read the same sentence.

If the idea is strong enough, the market doesn't matter. Nobody had put a live hologram on a concert stage in Bangladesh. That wasn't a reason to avoid it. It was the reason to do it.

FAQ

Written by Zunayed Sabbir Ahmed — Technical Director & VJ, based in Dhaka, Bangladesh, working internationally.

TouchDesigner Comments and Network Boxes

tekt — Sat, 25 Jul 2026 23:47:48 +0000

TouchDesigner projects can get complicated. Organize and annotate your projects because otherwise you'll have no idea what's going on when you come back to them in a few months.

“Basic Isn’t Boring”: A Conversation with the Academy of Live Technology’s Graham Thorne [Notch]

Graham Thorne — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 09:14:03 +0000

I recently did an interview with Notch. Wanted to share:

[https://medium.com/notchblog/basic-isnt-boring-academy-of-live-tech-99053bbd5990]

Isadora 4.5

Graham Thorne — Thu, 23 Jul 2026 09:11:17 +0000

*Isadora 4.5 is now live. *

Highlights

Most importantly, Isadora 4.5 offers VST audio plugin support, and we cannot wait to see what our creative community members will do with Isadora's new, advanced, and flexible audio manipulation capabilities.

This new version also offers a fixed version of the PJLink Plugin, a wild new video actor, 11 new audio actors, a huge improvement to the autosave system, many bug fixes, and several stability improvements.

NEW FEATURE: Cross-Platform VST Audio Plugin Support
In a huge leap forward, Isadora now supports VST (Virtual Studio Technology) audio plugins and VSTi (virtual instrument) plugins on both macOS and Windows. VST audio plugins process sound in real time, while VSTi (instrument) plugins generate audio (typically through synthesis or sample playback). This is a major enhancement to Isadora's audio capabilities, allowing you to use thousands of free and paid plugins available online. From high-quality effects like reverb, delay, and compression to complex synthesizers and sample-based instruments, this new feature opens the door to a wide range of creative and professional audio workflows. TroikaTronix would like to thank our friends at SIT (Scènes Interactives Technologiques) for commissioning us to develop this feature.

*LINK: * [https://support.troikatronix.com/support/solutions/articles/13000106556-isadora-4-release-notes#Izzy45]

MadMapper 6 Masterclass — Full Course Overview (Free Preview)

Zunayed Sabbir Ahmed — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 10:28:23 +0000

If you've ever wanted to get into projection mapping but didn't know where to start, this one's for you. Below is the first chapter of my MadMapper 6 Masterclass — a full walkthrough of everything the course covers, from your very first mapped surface to a complete timeline-based show running projection, LED, DMX lighting, and lasers together.

What this masterclass actually covers

MadMapper started as a projection mapping tool, but it's grown into something bigger — a full visual mapping platform that can convert visuals to projectors, lights, and lasers alike. This course is built to give you a fresh, MadMapper 6-specific foundation, step by step, with no assumed prior experience.

Across 22 chapters and 5+ hours, you'll go from the fundamentals all the way to a real, production-grade workflow:

Projection mapping fundamentals and hardware requirements
Installing and setting up MadMapper 6, and a full interface tour
Output panels and connecting external displays, lights, and lasers
Drawing surfaces, masks, and groups for your first projection mapping
Adding a second projector for advanced geometric mapping
Building scenes, cues, and your first timeline
Controlling MadMapper with MIDI controllers and live audio input
Adding a TV for seamless visuals that flow from screen to projection
Basic DMX lighting and laser mapping
Space Scanner, to save serious setup time
Combining everything into one complete timeline show
Best practices to get clean, optimized output from every project

Who this is for

Whether you're an aspiring projection mapping artist, an event designer looking to add mapping to your toolkit, an AV technician moving into media servers, a lighting/LED programmer wanting to integrate DMX with visuals, or a show producer building structured timeline-based productions — this course is built to take you from zero to confident.

About the course

MadMapper 6 Masterclass | Beginner to Intermediate is a self-paced online course including the full video training, practical tasks, and downloadable example projects. Taught by me, Zunayed Sabbir Ahmed — I've been working with MadMapper for over 14 years, producing everything from small installations to national-grade productions, and this course is my attempt to give MadMapper 6 the fresh, dedicated walkthrough it deserves.

Enroll in the full MadMapper 6 Masterclass: https://studio-z.ca/all-courses/madmapper-6-masterclass-beginner-to-intermediate/

MadMapper 6 Masterclass Review: Is It Worth $349?

Zunayed Sabbir Ahmed — Mon, 20 Jul 2026 05:46:42 +0000

MadMapper 6 Masterclass Review: Is It Worth $349?

I am reviewing my own course. I know how that looks. But after fourteen years with MadMapper, hundreds of one-on-one teaching sessions, and watching this community grow — I think I am exactly the right person to tell you honestly what this course is, who it is built for, and whether the price makes sense for you specifically.

Is the MadMapper 6 Masterclass worth $349? The honest answer is: it depends on who you are.

Why I Built It

I have been teaching MadMapper in one-on-one sessions for years. In nearly every session I found the same thing. 99 percent of students had never found a structured step-by-step learning base. They had watched YouTube videos. Read forum posts. They could do some things confidently and had terrifying gaps in others. MadMapper has good content on YouTube but it is topic-specific and not sequential. And most of it was made on MadMapper 3 or MM4. Version 6 has a fundamentally different interface and a completely rebuilt timeline. Learning on old tutorials and then opening MM6 is disorienting at best.

I wanted to bring more professionals and serious hobbyists into the full world of mapping — not just projection but everything. Projection, LED, lights, laser, the whole thing. That is what a masterclass means. Everything you need to become a master.

What Is Inside

22 chapters. Just over five hours of video. Downloadable example projects and practical tasks throughout. Lifetime access.

The course moves through four phases: foundation covering hardware, install, and interface; core mapping covering surfaces, media, geometry, masks, and groups; show building covering multi-projector output, scenes, cues, timeline, external controls, and live inputs; and specialized outputs covering Space Scanner, LED, DMX, laser, Timeline Level 2, and troubleshooting.

The final chapter is nearly an hour on its own. We build a complete timeline-based show from scratch — recapping everything from the course and putting it together into a real deliverable. That is where the learning consolidates.

The Chapter That Will Surprise You

The stitching and stacking chapter. These are the two essential paths for working with multi-projector installations and I have never seen them explained anywhere near as clearly as in this chapter. There is no proper YouTube video that covers this the way this chapter does. If you are planning multi-projector work — and at professional scale you will be — this chapter alone justifies serious attention.

What I Left Out and Why

Advanced functions are not covered in depth. Some are on YouTube. The rest I cover in one-on-one sessions. I made this deliberate call because the course is beginner to intermediate and overloading it with advanced material would bury the foundation. Get the foundation right. The advanced skills build naturally on top.

Is $349 Too Much?

If you are a professional or serious about becoming one — no. You are gaining a skill that pays well in this economy. 22 chapters, five-plus hours of video, example projects, lifetime access. You know what that means in terms of actual learning hours and practical value.

If you are a serious hobbyist who genuinely wants to understand how this all works and not just dabble — also no. You will use this course for years. Lifetime access means you come back to it every time you level up.

If you are casually curious and not sure whether mapping is something you want to pursue — watch the introduction video first. It summarizes everything the course delivers. If you look at what I show in that video and want that knowledge, buy it. If not, that is a fair and honest answer for yourself before spending anything.

Who It Is For

Aspiring mappers starting from zero. Event designers and installation creators adding mapping to their toolkit. AV technicians expanding into media server and mapping workflows. LED and lighting programmers wanting to integrate visual mapping with DMX and display systems. Live show producers who want to build structured timeline-based shows professionally.

When I built this course I pictured someone enthusiastic, craving to gather mapping knowledge, willing to be taught step by step with real examples. If that is you, this course was built for you.

What Backs This Up

I am a certified MadMapper trainer recognized directly by MadMapper. That is not a self-assigned title. It is verifiable on MadMapper's official website. Fourteen years. 400-plus shows. 20-plus international productions. That is the experience behind every chapter.

The fragments approach — YouTube, forums, trial and error — works. I lived it. But it always leaves gaps and those gaps show up at the worst possible moments. This course fills them in the right order from someone who has already made every mistake so you do not have to. That is what $349 buys.

Get Started: https://studio-z.ca/all-courses/madmapper-6-masterclass-beginner-to-intermediate/

Free Resolume Killer?

Eric — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 20:27:01 +0000

Hey everyone — if you're tired of paying big licensing fees just to run a video sequencer, we feel you. So we built our own and we're giving it away. Introducing MXR, a free video sequencer, live now at www.mxr-labs.com

Currently It's got solid FX, MIDI, and OSC support, and runs right in your browser. We're putting the finishing touches on a standalone Windows version set to drop in a few weeks. And a Mac version a month from now pending Apple's usual gate keeping.

We're also messing around with AI image/video generation for filling gaps in your clip library, plus some early LLM and autonomous-control features (still buggy, very much beta — use at your own risk, feedback welcome).

Jump in hit us back with things you'd like to see or things you think are missing. We're actively developing it and the Windows version.

Thx
Eric

MXR Founder

TouchDesigner Power Button Tutorial

tekt — Sun, 05 Jul 2026 20:01:29 +0000

TouchDesigner does amazing things. But sometimes you need it to stop. Learn how to do that with The Power Button!
It's powerful.
And it's a button.
Appreciate it!