It is clear from a Follow-Me perspective, and the industry as a whole that training & education is key for tracking and following systems. Tracking is still in its infancy and therefore the users need help & guidance to navigate this ‘new’ 5th layer in a show design. That new layer will of course eventually become a standard inclusion, joining lighting, audio, video and stage automation as a compulsory element to a show design. But to get there we need users to have a good experience with tracking solutions, therefore education is crucial.

This requires knowledge of tracking products, but also tracking / following as a service….

Products

Standard Follow-Me training is two days, the first only deals with Follow-Me 3D. Clients should be taken through all aspects and features. This leaves plenty of time for the crucial part of the day – the clients repeating everything they’ve seen with ‘hands-on’ learning – setting up a system from zero and getting a working, finely-tuned perfect system integrated with a console. This includes training with PSN and OSC. 

Follow-Me 3D is quick, easy and logical to setup, but it seems some users forget the basics, or over complicate the show file, ignore the importance of accuracy, or simply start experimenting wildly! – Our training tries to emphasise that keeping it as simple as possible will give the best result. If it can work on U2 at the Sphere, it can work anywhere.

The second day is for Follow-Me Track-iT, where more concentration is needed. This fairly new technology of Ultra-wide band (UWB) brings in an element that most industry people simply have no knowledge of. We need to help them and offer the best practices, advice and support to get the optimum result. Our localisation method within the RF system, development team talent and listening/understanding the real client feedback, pushes us to a level beyond our UWB competitors.

We love training and interacting with you & your clients, we encourage you to visit our HQ with your clients and receive the full 2-day training together – collectively working as a combined force.

However another training in tracking terms comes from not talking about the specifics of the products, but the tracking Itself… Everyone must buy in early to a tracking system being used on a production. Artist management, the costume department and stage management are just a few of the people that should be aware of the realities of tracking – Tags may have to be worn, swapped and retrieved. Position of them on the body is crucial, are they fully aware of this?

It is the same at the other end of the production – Is the console team fully educated on how to control Follow-Me?. 

Show them at the console how Follow-Me is organised & how to easily action or recall the various control channels.

On the next page you can see the advised topics and running order for a Follow-Me training.

Have a great install & reach out to us if you need help!

Your Follow-Me team.

Follow-Me 3D Topics:

• Hardware overview
• Origin & coordinate axis
• Measuring the area
• Inputing those measurements (calibration tab or 3D window)
• Camera (positioning & calibration)
• Setup controllers (patch & default mappings)
• Universes (adding & merging)
• Fixtures (adding, patching, control channels)
• Fixture refinement (orientations, rough positions & refinement)
• Targets (adding, assigning fixtures to targets)
• Fine Tuning (Prediction, zOffset, CBS, Flipping, etc)
• Masking
• Assignments
• Presets
• User Mappings
• Proximity
• OSC and PSN
• Console integration and control

Follow-Me Track-iT Topics:

• Anchor placement (rules, tips, best practices)
• Anchor measuring (Via the Follow-Me app and direct via the Leica)
• Server connection & net creation
• Starting the net, creating objects.
• Tracker placement
• Fine Tuning (Offsets, Motion Smoothing, Blacklisting)