Panorama Projection with Calibrator Lite

Last updated 6 August 2026

A complete build: two projectors covering one flat wall, aligned and blended by camera, with no measuring of projector positions and no manual warping. The camera here is permanently installed; it could equally sit on a technician's laptop for the duration of the commissioning.

This is the fastest route from an empty project to a calibrated panorama, and the whole job takes about four minutes of real time.

Watch it happen. This page is the written version of a recorded session — the video shows every interaction in real time, including how long the calibration itself takes.

Video: Panorama Projection with Calibrator Lite

Before you start

  • Two projectors covering one flat wall, each cabled to its own GPU output
  • A camera that can see the whole projected area from one position — fixed on site, or connected to a laptop running Brainsalt Hub
  • A way to see the intended corners in the photo — the screen's own border, or markers stuck to the wall. Nothing is found automatically; you place the corners yourself — see step 6
  • The room dark, and staying dark for the whole run

1. Create the projection

In the Scene View, right-click and choose Add scene object → Projection Setup Wizard, then Panorama for a flat screen. Set Projector Count to 2 and click Create.

Leave the projector parameters empty. Distance, throw ratio, lens shift — none of it needs filling in here, because the calibration measures and overwrites all of it. That is the single biggest time saving in this workflow, and it is not obvious: the wizard asks for numbers you would normally hunt down in a data sheet, and here you can skip them.

Backstage creates the surface and both projectors in one setup group, already aimed at the screen. Because they share a group, each projector already covers the surface — there is nothing to assign.

2. Route the projectors to outputs

Open Video Routing and connect each projector to the GPU output it is physically cabled to. Projectors are rows, outputs are columns.

Until this is done the scene is correct and the wall is dark.

3. Add Calibrator Lite

In Scene Objects, right-click the group holding the surface and add a CalibratorLite node. Double-click it to open the Camera Calibration window, then pick your screen from the Surface dropdown.

4. Focus the camera

On a new installation the camera is often not focused yet. Press Focus — the projectors display a line pattern, and the camera takes a test shot you can judge.

Zoom into the photo with Ctrl + wheel to check the lines are crisp. Blurred lines mean the solver will be working from soft edges, and the result inherits that.

5. Take the reference photo

Start the calibration. The projectors show a grey image and the camera takes a reference photo. Two things get checked on it before going further:

  • Camera orientation. If the image is upside down or sideways, rotate it — in this setup the projectors are ceiling-mounted, so the photo needs rotating.

  • The bright area. The white-detection tool finds the projected region in the photo.

6. Place the corner markers

Drag the four markers onto the corners you want the projection to have. Zoom in with Ctrl + wheel while placing them — precision here is what the whole calibration is built on.

The markers are your input, not a detection. Calibrator Lite does not find the screen — a border or edge is not detected by the camera. The markers exist so you can say where the projection's corners belong, and the calibration fits the image to the shape you define.

That gives three cases:

  • The screen has a visible border — place the markers on its corners in the photo. The border is your reference, not the software's.

  • The screen has no border, as on this bare wall — you need something visible in the photo to aim at. Precisely measured markers stuck to the wall at the intended corners, before calibration, give you that.

  • You can also place them freely. The projection is fitted into whatever quadrilateral you define — useful when the exact edges are yours to choose rather than dictated by a physical screen.

7. Run the calibration

With the markers placed, start the calibration proper. The projectors show stripe patterns, the camera photographs each in turn, and the solver computes projector frustums and warp meshes from the correspondences.

This part runs at its own pace — a few minutes for two projectors. Leave the room undisturbed while it works.

8. Accept the measured screen

At the end the calibrator has measured the real screen, and compares its aspect ratio against the surface in your scene — which, following step 1, was never given real dimensions. It offers to correct the scene to match what it measured.

Accept it. That is the mechanism that lets you skip the measuring at the start: the camera does it, and the scene is corrected to reality afterwards.

9. Check the result

A confirmation photo of the calibrated projection is captured. Pan and zoom around it — the geometry should be continuous straight across the seam between the two projectors.

Then toggle Blending on and off. With it off you see two overlapping images and the bright band where they cross; with it on the join disappears.

Done when: the seam is invisible with blending on, and toggling it off shows the overlap exactly where you would expect it. If the geometry is continuous but the seam is visible as a brightness band, that is blending to fix — not the calibration.

What this build depends on

Requirement

Why

One camera seeing the whole projected area

Calibrator Lite works with a single camera from a single position. Several cameras means the separate Calibrator application.

A flat or cylindrical screen

Calibrator Lite covers these two. Domes, spheres and imported models need a different approach.

Corner references the camera can see

A screen border, or measured markers on a bare wall.

Darkness, held for the whole run

The solver compares photos taken minutes apart. Light that changes between them corrupts the result even if the room was dark in each.

Use Camera Calibration (CalibratorLite) — the window in full: lens models, masks, Fix Camera, snapshots, black level

Panoramic Projection - Projection Wizard — the wizard on its own, for flat and curved screens

Warp, Blend & Black Level — the stage this build's alignment belongs to, including the alternatives to a camera

Set up a manual panorama projection — the same result without a camera, aligned by hand