Art / Lab

domo-lab: producing for the dome without a dome

A TouchDesigner system that brings 360, 180 and flat video to the dome, and a virtual reality planetarium to preview it before booking the theater

Virtual planetarium theater in Unreal Engine with a crown of frames from Planet City by Liam Young across the dome, in a dome adaptation in progress by David; the zenith is left dark.

Planet City by Liam Young — dome adaptation in progress by David. Frames from the film, seen in the virtual theater.

Year: 2026, ongoing
Question: How do you produce for a dome when there's no dome at hand?
Tools: TouchDesigner 2025, Unreal Engine 5.8, Blender 4, Spout, C++, OpenXR, Git
Links: GitHub repository · Documentation · Dome Master — Planetario de Bogotá

Where it comes from

It grew directly out of my work as Dome Master at the Planetario de Bogotá (2025–2026). Every test on the real dome meant an appointment, a trip and a slot in the theater. Things I wanted to see in five minutes took weeks, and many decisions were made blind.

That’s where this lab comes from: a place to produce and preview dome content without a physical dome at hand. You can test dome video from a seat, in virtual reality (OpenXR) or on a screen, before setting foot in the physical theater. Besides Planet City, the Liam Young film I’m adapting for the dome (the hard case of flat 16:9 video; the frames are his, not mine), it’s useful for calibrating complex works like 3gracias (frame-by-frame painting adapted to the dome) and Dosis de Máquinas.

What’s in the repository

A TouchDesigner 2025 system. It takes 360, 180 (domemaster or VR180) or flat 16:9 video and turns it into the exact signal a dome needs:

A fisheye domemaster to send to the real dome’s projector (via Spout, NDI or render to disk).
A 2:1 equirectangular canvas (TD_Domo_Lab) streamed in real time over Spout to the virtual theater.
Modules for flat video: a crown around the dome, a four-screen room, rings and a cylinder.
A calibration module with a test pattern to check orientation, zenith discs, front marks and FOV.

A virtual reality planetarium simulator (Unreal Engine 5.8). Built with a custom C++ module (ASpoutDomeReceiver) that captures the Spout stream with no latency. It includes three script-generated theater models:

Sala 180 (a 23 m horizontal planetarium with 360 seats and a control area, based on the Planetario de Bogotá).
Sala 45 (a tilted Maloka-style dome, with a seated audience).
Sala 90 (a vertical dome for a standing audience with railings).

The dome is emissive and works with SkyLight and Lumen global illumination: whatever is projected tints and bounces around the room, changing how the space reads. It works with VR headsets via OpenXR (SteamVR, Virtual Desktop) or on a flat screen.

Spec sheets for Colombia’s domes. Open technical documentation for theaters in Bogotá, Medellín, Maloka, Barranquilla, Cali, Pereira, Pasto and Manizales: diameter, tilt, seating, projection systems and input specifications. They’re updated and corrected through pull requests on GitHub.

How to get involved

The repository is open source (MIT / CC BY 4.0). You can clone the system, try it with your own material, test sequences in the virtual theater or contribute to the domes’ spec sheets.

Log

September 17, 2026. First release of the repository. The TouchDesigner system outputs all three formats over Spout, the Unreal Engine theater has the dome, the seats and the control area, and the test pattern has already gone through the whole chain. The spec sheets for the eight domes are written with what I could confirm; what’s missing is marked.

Gallery

Blender render of the planetarium theater: a dome with a gray-and-white checkerboard, a wooden slat wall with the door at the back and rows of reclining seats in half-light. — The theater modeled in Blender before moving to Unreal Engine: a 23-meter dome, 360 seats and a control area.

Blender render from a seat: the dome's checkerboard converges at the zenith, which sits slightly in front of the viewer. — What a seated person sees. The zenith isn't directly overhead but slightly in front, as in the real theater.

Test pattern in domemaster format: a green circle with a cyan disc at the center, eight black spokes, a white mark showing the front and a magenta arrow at the zenith. — The test pattern as it comes out of TouchDesigner, in domemaster.

The test pattern projected on the virtual dome, seen from the seats: the cyan disc is overhead, the spokes run down to the edge of the dome and the white mark lands at the front. — The same pattern on the virtual dome. The front mark lands at the front and the zenith at the zenith: the chain is correct.

Crown domemaster: a frame from Planet City by Liam Young, in a dome adaptation in progress by David, mirrored around the edge of the circle, with a red-haired figure and city lights; the center is darker. — Planet City by Liam Young — dome adaptation in progress by David. A frame mounted as a crown, in domemaster: the flat video surrounds the audience instead of sticking to the zenith.

The virtual dome looking up at the zenith, with frames from Planet City by Liam Young in a dome adaptation in progress by David: the crown circles the highest point, which stays dark, with the city lights stretched toward the center. — Planet City by Liam Young — dome adaptation in progress by David. Looking up at the zenith from the virtual theater.

Side view from a seat in the virtual theater, with frames from Planet City by Liam Young in a dome adaptation in progress by David: the crown rises along the edge of the dome and the seats are dark. Screenshot of the Unreal Engine editor, with its working markers. — Planet City by Liam Young — dome adaptation in progress by David. From a side seat, in the Unreal Engine editor.