Make your own billboard generator

This tutorial shows how to use the Billboard Generator Generator to create a new billboard generator. In other words, if we have a nice picture of a billboard like this: How can we project pictures and text onto it? And how can we let others do the same? The Billboard Generator Generator lets you do just that. Here are some examples of generators made with it:

Now it is our turn!

Step 1: Upload the picture

The first step is to upload the picture to MakeSweet. That's easy, we just choose the file and click upload on the Billboard Generator Generator. After the upload, we see our picture with a green grid overlaid on it. Our job now is to move that grid, called the screen, so that it matches the part of the picture onto which we want to project.

Step 2: Set up the green screen

We click and drag the corners of the green screen and move them to the corners of our billboard. For best results, the screen should be laid out as accurately as possible, so it is a good idea to zoom in on the corners to check them and make fine adjustments.

Step 3: Making the generator

That's most of the work finished. If our billboard has an advertisement on it, it can be automatically blanked out for us. Since it is already blank, we unselect this option: That's it! We click the button to generate... And wait up to a minute or two.

Step 4: Using the generator

The result is a generator with the same capabilities as all the other generators on MakeSweet: We can immediately start using it, or pass the web address of the generator to others to let them try it!

Using masks

There are some complications we may run into for other billboards:

• There may be objects in front of the billboard, partially obscuring it. It doesn't look great to just project over them.
• There might be gaps in the billboard. It also doesn't look great to just project over gaps.
• The billboard may not be rectangular in shape.
• The billboard may not be flat.

The Billboard Generator Generator can cope with the first three problems using masks (for the fourth problem, the only solution is to use Blender and the Generator Wizard).

A mask is basically a stencil that we overlay on the picture, and we only project on the parts of the picture where the stencil leaves a gap.

If you know how to use GIMP or Photoshop or a similar image-editing program, you can prepare a mask as a black-and-white picture. For example, if our "billboard" were a stop sign:

Then we would need to prepare a mask like this: And upload it: (It is also possible to make a mask directly, without an external program, by clicking the "Show Mask" button and drawing with the mouse.) Once that is done, we can go ahead and select an imaginary rectangular area that the sign was cut out of: And the resulting generator behaves just like we would want. You can see it live here (along with other designs with masks):

Questions?

The Billboard Generator Generator is a new tool and changing from day to day. If you run into problems, please complain loudly on the forums.