Disguise announced that its GX 3+ media servers and Designer software are the technological backbone behind the interactive LED castle created with Notch for the stage of Laura Pausini’s Yo Canto world tour.
The GX 3+ provides the processing power required to drive the LED castle screens with content made up of 50 Notch layers. This includes multiple camera feeds, IMAG effects, and 8K particle simulations interacting with the live music.
The visuals can also be distributed across multiple levels of the castle structure, displaying different imagery on each section, as well as across the columns and a central door used for the artist’s entrances and exits.
Fans around the world had high expectations for this tour, so we wanted to develop a stage design with a strong and recognizable visual identity. To achieve this, we created a 3D castle in Notch that was later integrated into the stage LED screens. The complexity of the content, along with the large number of real-time layers and effects, required extremely high processing power, which made the Disguise GX 3+ the only solution capable of running the system without limiting visual performance, explains Carlo Barbero, head of the Disguise video team on the tour.
From 3D Model to Stage
With the GX 3+, Barbero and his team had the power required to run the show smoothly, but they also needed to ensure that the castle could adapt quickly. The tour would visit hundreds of venues with different LED configurations, and the visual content needed to perform consistently across all of them.
“We knew that Yoshi Lehouck, the tour operator, would constantly face changing conditions, including different stage layouts, missing or repositioned LED towers, and local IMAG formats in 16:9 or 4:3”, explains Stefano Petroni, Disguise Programmer on Yo Canto. “Each configuration required a different programming approach: live content had to be repositioned, the two incoming camera feeds had to be handled differently, and the presence or absence of certain Notch effects had to be managed accordingly”.
To adapt the content to different venues, the team used Disguise Designer software alongside the GX 3+.
Designer’s previsualisation feature allowed us to review the show in 3D together with Laura Pausini and show director Luca Tommassini before the live performances. Even before the LED screens were physically installed on stage, we were able to improve decision-making and coordination from the early stages of the process, says Barbero.
Designer’s Expressions and timeline-based sequencing features also proved essential for the team. Expressions allowed Petroni to manipulate content and live feeds while reducing rendering times. Sequencing enabled Lorenzo Venturini, Senior Notch Designer at GATE1, to animate Notch parameters both for real-time adjustments and to support the visual development of each track.
“Some of the show’s standout moments, such as the atmospheric moon sequence during Hijo de la Luna or the mix of effects during Medley Pop, would not have been possible without Disguise”, says Venturini.
Building a backup system
By working within the Disguise ecosystem, the team was also able to rely on the company’s X1 solution as a portable backup system for the tour, giving them the ability to run the show even if technical equipment failed to arrive on time during the demanding international schedule.
Previously, any delay in transporting the equipment meant having to rent a new media server at the venue and reconfigure the system. With X1, however, the team can launch the show directly from any laptop using a license key, instantly accessing the LED castle files without having to reprogram the content on another platform. This provides greater operational security on a tour involving constant international travel.
Whether it’s the GX 3+, Designer, or the X1 backup system, working with Disguise allows us to push creativity further than ever before. We were able to achieve everything we envisioned without compromise, and that has led to incredible results, concludes Venturini.
