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Extended Real Lights course

by Pavel Zmunchila from Setup.Design

and Stanislav Glazov

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Extended Real Lights Course

Real Lights follows a light show the way it is actually made — in two parts.

Part 1, Pre-production, translates a creative brief into a feasible production: venue and safety constraints, roles and budget, the concept, and the visualisation and technical documentation that let a team build it. You model the venue and the rig in Capture and Depence.

Part 2, Production, builds the system that runs the show: networked DMX and Art-Net from TouchDesigner, patching and programming in GrandMA, a data bridge between the two, pixel mapping onto LED surfaces, show control over MIDI and OSC, laser graphics with Pangolin and Sollinger, and moving heads aimed from 3D positions.

Includes:

19 recorded lessons (lesson 09 coming soon)
A homework assignment to practise on your own
Project files: TouchDesigner projects, GrandMA show files, Depence files
Access anytime, no deadlines

Course aims

Turn creative live-event ambitions into coherent, feasible production concepts within professional constraints.
Practise disciplined pre-production that communicates design intent and enables dependable event delivery.
Conceive and realise coherent, scalable real-time production systems that serve artistic and technical intent.
Build confident judgement in coordinating complex live production workflows with reliable, responsive control.

Online Course Duration

20 weeks

Lessons Duration

3 Hours per week

Your skill level

Intermediate

Software

TouchDesigner, GrandMA, Capture, Depence, Pangolin, Sollinger

Prerequisites

TouchDesigner Extreme 101 and 102

Formats

Self-paced

Who needs this

Stage Designers Media Artists 3D Artists Musicians VJs Light Designers

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Part 1 — Pre-production · 13.4 h of video

By the end of the session, a successful student will be able to:
• Analyze the development of theatrical lighting technologies and control practices
• Select and configure lighting approaches to achieve intended visual and spatial effects
• Design integrated fixture, power, signal, and control arrangements for lighting installations
• Apply protocol and synchronization strategies to coordinate multi-system show control safely

By the end of the session, a successful student will be able to:
• Synthesize client briefs, venue constraints, and budgets into feasible live-show concepts
• Construct preliminary production budgets that account for equipment, logistics, labour, and commercial terms
• Develop build-ready technical plans and documentation for suppliers and production teams
• Coordinate control, content, and communication workflows for reliable live-show execution

By the end of the session, a successful student will be able to:
• Analyze venue constraints and their impact on event design
• Select appropriate construction approaches for site conditions
• Apply technical approval and certification requirements to production planning
• Develop feasible production designs that address environmental and performer safety

By the end of the session, a successful student will be able to:
• Synthesize creative briefs, venue conditions, and production constraints into feasible live-event concepts
• Develop spatial layouts that balance audience-facing visual composition with physical fixture placement
• Select visualization, modelling, and content-preparation approaches for varied screen geometries and viewing requirements
• Organize reusable scenes, assets, and transition strategies for reliable live operation within resource constraints

By the end of the session, a successful student will be able to:
• Construct real-time visualisation scenes from venue geometry, fixtures, and media
• Implement lighting layouts and fixture arrays for venue concepts
• Demonstrate lighting looks through fixture control and atmospheric treatment
• Analyze visual-layout decisions against technical documentation requirements

By the end of the session, a successful student will be able to:
• Construct preliminary lighting and multimedia layouts from validated venue models
• Produce technical plots, equipment summaries, and exports for production teams
• Configure materials, media displays, and transparent surfaces for event visualisation
• Create controlled scene views and concept renders that communicate design intent

By the end of the session, a successful student will be able to:
• Navigate and organise stage scenes across 2D and 3D workspaces
• Construct venue and stage layouts from calibrated plans and reusable assets
• Prepare geometry, splines and display surfaces for previsualisation
• Establish and preserve effective scene viewpoints

By the end of the session, a successful student will be able to:
• Construct and patch a reference-led lighting system
• Manage fixture selection, substitution, layout, and documentation
• Implement pixel-mapped LED-tube fixtures across DMX universes
• Check a patched DMX-matrix LED tube in live mode by changing its colour from the programmer

• This lesson is being recorded and will be added to the course.

By the end of the session, a successful student will be able to:
• Create previsualisation for the light show

Part 2 — Production · 27.2 h of video

By the end of the session, a successful student will be able to:
• Configure Art-Net/DMX control data for patched lighting fixtures
• Construct reusable high-resolution fixture controls from normalized animation signals
• Implement parameter-control relationships and animation routing across multiple targets
• Troubleshoot channel mapping, value conversion, and control-data assignment

By the end of the session, a successful student will be able to:
• Analyze geometry components and attribute placement for texture and control-data workflows
• Construct UV layouts and projections that map 3D surfaces to intended 2D content
• Implement perspective-correct content delivery for curved, segmented, and multi-screen installations
• Build geometry-driven pixel-mapping and output workflows for lighting and laser applications

By the end of the session, a successful student will be able to:
• Analyze lighting-control workflows to configure fixture systems
• Implement DMX patching and addressing for lighting fixtures
• Construct reusable lighting looks and playback states
• Resolve fixture-control mappings while preserving programmed attributes

By the end of the session, a successful student will be able to:
• Implement networked fixture patching for a lighting-control workflow
• Analyze fixture definitions, addressing, and instances to plan appropriate control
• Construct fixture- and pixel-level selections and groups for independent programming
• Create and refine reusable movement, position, and colour programming

By the end of the session, a successful student will be able to:
• Integrate show-file management, fixture organisation, and live-control workflows
• Construct multi-cue playbacks with tracking, recall, and controlled output
• Apply spatial selection and playback preparation to manage fixture and pixel sequences
• Create smooth, prioritised transitions between lighting states

By the end of the session, a successful student will be able to:
• Synthesize coordinated lighting patterns across fixture matrices
• Map video imagery to virtual fixture layouts for external control
• Implement reliable pixel-mapping data exchange with a lighting-control system
• Design integrated controls for shared procedural and console-based lighting operation

By the end of the session, a successful student will be able to:
• Synthesize procedural control data with console-based lighting workflows
• Construct scalable fixture layouts from spatial and metadata sources
• Map visual content to spatially arranged fixtures
• Implement real-time multi-universe lighting output with signal-priority management

By the end of the session, a successful student will be able to:
• Implement integrated fixture-data, network, and visualisation workflows
• Construct spatially accurate multi-pixel fixture representations from coordinate data
• Design scalable mappings between sampled visual content and RGBW fixture channels
• Analyze and optimize DMX universe allocation, delivery, and visual alignment

By the end of the session, a successful student will be able to:
• Apply MIDI, OSC, manual, and procedural signals to lighting controls
• Construct reusable fixture-control mappings that accommodate patch variations
• Implement rhythmically driven lighting triggers and animated dimmer patterns
• Analyze lighting-control data representations and addressing relationships

By the end of the session, a successful student will be able to:
• Synthesize scanner-safe laser graphics from geometry and signal data
• Configure laser-control playback, timing, colour, and output constraints
• Construct coherent multi-output laser sequences using point topology and ordering
• Implement surface-projection workflows that map geometry to usable scanner space

By the end of the session, a successful student will be able to:
• Direct moving-head fixtures to spatial targets using XYZ positions
• Route lighting-control data between console and media environments
• Record and replay lighting-channel data as image-based data
• Combine lighting-control sources using change-based priority

Pavel Zmunchila

Co-Founder of S E T U P

Pavel Zmunchila is a lighting and visual artist, as well as a set designer with over 12 years of experience in a vast field from modern theater and technological art to electronic dance music and stadium rock tours.

Started in 2012 as a technical director and lighting designer of a modern theater and music venue, developed further to a lighting designer of one of the largest musical theater projects in Russia. Continued developing skills and expanding toolset, moved forward to creating custom control systems for lighting, lasers and real-time generative video content for music events.

In 2018, together with Stepan Novikov, Dmitry Znamenskiy and Anton Kochnev, founded Setup Design studio which successfully collaborates with various musical, art and festival projects as well as creates their own technological art experiences.

Stanislav Glazov

Creative Technologist, Media-Artist. Founder of Hou2Touch

3D AND AUDIOVISUAL ARTIST WITH OVER 22 YEARS OF EXPERIENCE IN COMPUTER GRAPHICS AND 20 YEARS OF TEACHING EXPERIENCE
For more than 20 years, he has worked in light and visual art, seeking innovative opportunities where art and technology intersect. His installations and AV performances explore themes such as inner and social freedom, consciousness, identity, and loneliness in the modern world, using high-tech techniques.

Driven by his desire to create unforgettable experiences that inspire, he takes an individualized approach to each work, creating unique algorithms and synchronizing sound with visuals and digital shapes. He is also known for producing music with modular synthesizers and analog devices, influenced by industrial music, which combines noise, disharmony, and shamanism to take listeners on an intense emotional journey.

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