Laser light shows are spectacular. They harness thin beams of concentrated light. Lasers create glowing graphics and fill space with Star Wars-like glowing beams and light shapes. Thanks to new technologies such as low-cost, high-power diodes, it has become much easier to make a quality laser light show.
Beyond continues that ease of use. A Beyond system consists of software and hardware for PC computers. The two components work together to get the best possible performance from laser projectors.
Beyond’s software lets you create, edit and present laser graphics and beam effects.
Beyond’s hardware (Flashback 3) converts software commands into signals to control an ILDA-compatible laser projector.
In addition, Beyond has a wide range of settings so the signal is always optimized for your projector. Whether you have a low-cost projector with slower 12K scanners, or one with the fastest available 60K scanners, Beyond will get the most out of it.
From Pangolin, the number one laser software company
Beyond comes from the world leader in lasershow software, Pangolin Laser Systems. For over 15 years, the world’s most powerful and popular lasershow system has been Pangolin’s Lasershow Designer 2000. It has won more ILDA (International Laser Display Association) technical awards than any other laser software. And, LD2000 has been used to create more ILDA Award-winning artistic shows than any other laser software.
Our primary next-generation programs are QuickShow and Beyond. QuickShow is for persons new to lasers, who need routine or typical laser shows. Beyond is for persons who want advanced features and who need more power and capabilities.
Frame Creation and Editing
Use drawing tools to create and edit graphics. These can be images, logos, text, and drawings. The tools are created specifically for the vector graphics that laser scanners project. (Beyond can also create and project raster bitmaps, like TV pictures, but most laser graphics are vector-based).
Frame Animation
Sequence your frames to create animations. (Note that this is different than having a single frame be rotated, or resized, or otherwise changed. Beyond is powerful enough to do rotations, resizing, etc. in real-time, to a single frame.) When we are talking about frame animations, we mean where the drawing itself changes in each frame. These changes can be hand-drawn, or they can be done by interpolating between a start frame and an end frame.
Features
Easy to use – Beyond is built on the user interface of QuickShow, which was designed to get beginners going fast. If you already know QuickShow, Beyond will be very familiar to you. Yet under the hood there are more settings and much greater control.
Modern Interface – Beyond has a sleek new look we call “classy and glassy”. It’s more modern than the Windows 2000 style used in Lasershow Designer 2000.
New Layer-based drawing – If you use Photoshop, you know how helpful layers are. Now you can work on different lasers in a single laser frame. This makes it much easier to work on some areas of the image, without affecting other areas.
New object-oriented drawing – When creating a frame, Beyond keeps track of what you draw as single objects. For example, a line is not just a sequence of points. Beyond remembers it as a line object. If you want to stretch or shrink the line, just grab an endpoint and move. Beyond will automatically reposition and renumber the points for you.
New spline (curve) tool – You can now create curves just as easily as lines. Click to set the start and endpoints, then pull the spline handle to stretch and shape a curve.
New visual scripting – Beyond has QuickTools, just like in the QuickShow program. Plus, the QuickTools can now be scripted using a simple visual interface, to create even more complex laser effects.
Unified Architecture – Beyond is a single program with all major features built-in, such as drawing, editing, timeline, playing live, abstract generation, and even 3D objects. (This is opposed to LD2000, which is a suite of different, individual programs from Pangolin and third parties.)
Works on all pangolin hardware – Beyond runs on our existing QM2000 and FB3 hardware.
Work on multiple shows simultaneously – You can now have more than one show open at a single time. This is perfect for live performance, when you want the ability to quickly switch between different shows.
Controls multiple projectors – A single Beyond program can run QM2000s and/or FB3s in multiple projectors. The number of projectors is virtually unlimited.
Virtually unlimited projection zones – You can set over 1000 different zones for the projector. This makes it much easier to put graphics and beams onto many different targets such as multiple screens.
Up to 100 beam positions – If you need to hit mirrors or other targets with beams, Beyond gives you far more beam positions than the limited number in QuickShow.
Beam positions can be animated – You can animate the beam positions, to easily make beam-chasing sequences
Beam positions can be images – Now, when you hit mirrors or other targets, you aren’t limited to using a dot. The beam can also project any Beyond frame. For example, you could hit mirrors with a logo instead of a dot.
Complete 3D modelling program built-in – Beyond Ultimate includes a 3D modeling and animation module. It’s like Autodesk 3ds MAX or Maxon Cinema 4D, but it is designed and optimized for laser. This means you don’t have to buy any other 3D modeling program. (If you already have other programs, we continue to sell our conversion plug-ins, so you can output laser graphics from 3ds MAX or Cinema 4D scenes.)
The first thing you will notice is that Beyond looks a lot like QuickShow. This is because it is built on the user interface philosophies of QuickShow – that is, a single, unified program that has live, timeline, frame editing, bitmap tracing, and other features all in one program.
In Beyond, there is a brand new frame editor code-named “Mega Draw”, which is a full object- oriented drawing program supporting multiple layers and a wide variety of drawing tools, including splines.
In Mega Draw, you can have four views (any four) or a single view and toggle between these with the click of a button. A background bitmap can be loaded into any view individually. The zoom, rotation and position controls work with the loaded background in the same way as it does with the normal drawing tools. The Spline feature makes it very easy to draw on top of a background image.
Beyond features many more beams than QuickShow (up to 100 beams). In fact, Beyond also has the ability to use “Images” for beam positions. In Beyond, an “image” is anything that can create an image – not only a single frame, but even animations, abstracts, etc.
The top level Beyond Ultimate features a unique 3D modeling and animation module. It is similar to CAD programs such as Autodesk 3ds MAX and Maxon Cinema 4D, but it is totally optimized for laser output. You can create 3D objects and worlds, and make 3D animations. It takes care of hidden lines, coloring, point count, and all the tedious details.
If you are familiar with our previous LD MAX and LD 4D converter software, Beyond gives even better output.
Plus, now you don’t have to buy 3ds MAX, which has a retail price of $3495. Right there, you save 2/3 the price of Beyond Ultimate.
