Why did they bother to include a Mesh Warp effect into Vegas 17? I figured I'd give a couple of use cases where it would come in handy. Its most powerful use comes when used in conjunction with Vegas Effects to create visuals for video projection mapping.
The end result looks like this... an example created by someone who mapped out a bunch of white cubes with their projector:
How does Mesh Warp come into play here? any time a projector shines an image out at any angle that isn't directly perpendicular towards the object it is hitting, an effect called keystoning happens. The white rectangle you were projecting out is no longer a rectangle if the projector is not directly facing the object (or "screen") being projected on, it instead will be warped so that one end of the rectangle is wider than the other, and this gets worse the more the angle increases.
(ignore the part about lens shift)
3D projection mapping means you are projecting video onto real world 3D objects, not flat screens like we traditionally use projectors for. Because they are not flat, and some parts move towards the screen while others move away, keystoning occurs. This must be corrected for the visuals being projected onto the object to line up right.
This is where mesh warping comes into play. We divide the screen into points, and drag each point around until the projected image lines up perfectly with the real world object. Most of the apps we mappers use allow us to do this in real time, but the problem is, sometimes the content we create is just a little off, and even with mesh warping, we have to go back and make adjustments (which means more rendering) to the visuals to make them line up right.
With Vegas Effects and Vegas Pro's Mesh Warping, we now have a tool that we can use in the visuals production pipeline that enables us to preview what the warp will look like before we go through what can sometimes be a lengthy rendering process. I can whip up some visuals in VE, send them over to VP, warp them into place with my projector hooked up to the external monitor output, and then I get to see exactly how it all lines up ahead of time, before I render.
The end result can be incredible, with everything from sculptures to rooms to entire skyscrapers coming to life:
The effect can be used for other stuff, as well... like if you want to get really crazy with it, you can do effects like what Soundgarden used for their Black Hole Sun video.
It's always seemed like this was one of the least understood new additions to VP17, so I thought I'd shed some light on some use case scenarios for it. It may not be the most useful effect for the average editor, but for people like me, it saves us a ton of rendering time during production.
If anyone here has a projector, experiment with it! Hook it up to your secondary output, point it at an object (white boxes work well, or walls/ceilings/floors/doors, anything that isn't a boring flat screen), take some video and drop it on the timeline, and experiment with mapping that video onto the various surfaces in your home. Use the mesh warp plugin to make it conform to the various surfaces on the object you are projecting on. Then, you can use Vegas' masking feature to do other cool stuff, like masking out the area where your door is, and putting one clip there, then another clip on the door frame, then another where your wall is, another on the ceiling (I usually put timelapses of clouds up there when playing around, or stars), etc... It can be a lot of fun to play with. I've made a career out of it, I now do video mapping for concerts, festivals, and corporate events all over North America (and hopefully beyond soon...).
Hopefully this will spark some interest in someone out there who hasn't heard of it to give it a shot.
I'll try to make a video tutorial showing how to do this in Vegas next week.