Sean Meighan
Welcome => Latest xLights/Nutcracker software => Topic started by: Phrog30 on February 09, 2016, 08:20:17 AM
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I'm "playing" with the BETA release(s) and noticed something weird. I have a few morph effects I wanted to adjust via the effect assist. Usually I can click on a corner and adjust. Now whenever I click on a corner the whole thing moves (hard to explain - if you click on a corner you will see what happens). I have attached my files. Go to 3:03.30, the house model.
Edit, I created a new sequence and it happens as well, so may be easier to do that then use my files, either way.
James
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To clarify, the issue is with a model group. I don't remember if we could adjust via effect assist for a model group in earlier versions, but you can now, and maybe that is the problem. See attached video. The effect assist works fine for just a model.
James
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Looks like it's working as intended. The problem is your model is too large so you're having trouble placing your mouse over the corner. Can you expand your window any larger? The reason you see a change in behavior is because of the new features I added a month or two ago. If you click on a corner it will drag the corner but if you click anywhere else but the corner then it defines a new location for the corner so it's working very similar to SuperStar. You can now click and drag to define the starting and ending points/vectors. Using a left click and drag you define the start and a right click and drag defines the end. So whats happening is you're missing the corner when you click and you're redefining new points. Watch the cursor...if it's not the hand icon then it doesn't think you're over the corner. On really large models sometimes you can't select the corners...it wasn't really designed to work well with 400x400 models.
I described the changes to how you move the Morph corners back in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yNqOI9ECzA (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yNqOI9ECzA)
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Looks like it's working as intended. The problem is your model is too large so you're having trouble placing your mouse over the corner. Can you expand your window any larger? The reason you see a change in behavior is because of the new features I added a month or two ago. If you click on a corner it will drag the corner but if you click anywhere else but the corner then it defines a new location for the corner so it's working very similar to SuperStar. You can now click and drag to define the starting and ending points/vectors. Using a left click and drag you define the start and a right click and drag defines the end. So whats happening is you're missing the corner when you click and you're redefining new points. Watch the cursor...if it's not the hand icon then it doesn't think you're over the corner. On really large models sometimes you can't select the corners...it wasn't really designed to work well with 400x400 models.
I described the changes to how you move the Morph corners back in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yNqOI9ECzA (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yNqOI9ECzA)
I see what you are saying. When adjusting a model via effect assist, we get "handles", which is just a large circle, is there a way to have that for a model group?
Even when I zoom in with windows magnifier it's hard to select the corner.
This is no problem, I can always use the sliders for adjusting and the window for visual feedback. I just thought it was worthwhile to bring up.
James
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Trust me you do have handles. If you expand the window large enough you will see them. The handles scale to fit inside the squares on the grid. If you have 400 squares you only have a few pixels of width to draw the handle. You can just use the other method where you click and drag to define your vectors. Whenever I do morphs on a big whole house model its almost 100% full sweeps anyways so I just use the quickset options.
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What size monitor do you use? Because mine is 2560x1440 and I am able to grab the handles on a 400x400 model.
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Gil, it's no problem. I can make it work the way it is.
My last comment was just curiosity on why the difference between the effect assist on a model vs model group... one has the circles the other doesn't.
My opinion is it makes it more intuitive for a new user which means less questions asked and less need to make videos on how to use.
Thanks for the info Gil, always much appreciated.
James
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The circles are there in both cases. I can't help it that you have the window too small such that the circle is only 1 pixel.
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The circles are there in both cases. I can't help it that you have the window too small such that the circle is only 1 pixel.
I respectfully disagree. I zoomed in 600% and saw no circles.
Again, I'm fine with it the way it is.
James
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You can't zoom. You gotta drag the edges of the effect assist window so that it will autosize the grid. If you get the squares large enough you will see the handles. You keep saying I don't draw handles on model groups and I don't believe that is true but I'll go home and prove it tonight if you want to challenge me.
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You can't zoom. You gotta drag the edges of the effect assist window so that it will autosize the grid. If you get the squares large enough you will see the handles. You keep saying I don't draw handles on model groups and I don't believe that is true but I'll go home and prove it tonight if you want to challenge me.
No sir, don't spend any more time on this than you already have.
I zoom using magnifier, not xlights. I know it's clunky, but does work ok.
James
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Zooming with the magnifier isn't going to change how many pixels are used to draw a grid cell. If you make the window small enough you will see the entire grid disappear because the calculated cell width will fall below zero. If you drag the window handles large enough you will see the handles. I think my explanation should be very intuitive.
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Zooming with the magnifier isn't going to change how many pixels are used to draw a grid cell. If you make the window small enough you will see the entire grid disappear because the calculated cell width will fall below zero. If you drag the window handles large enough you will see the handles. I think my explanation should be very intuitive.
Gil, I was using magnifier to magnify the view, I didn't expect anything more out of it. I understand the grid will not appear until the window is a specific size.
I did some more testing. I made two small 2x2 pixels matrix. I then created a group for these two matrix. I kept the default minimal grid. When I opened effect assist I saw a huge grid. I then went back to the group and changed from 400 to 10. I then saw the circles.
So this poses another question, if minimal grid is selected then why is the effect assist showing what's in the grid size, shouldn't it use the minimal size necessary?
Gil, your explanations are always very intuitive.
James
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I'm calling the model class functions to ask it the height and width of the model. I'm pretty sure whatever size grid you are seeing is the size being used inside the program for that model even if its a group. If you switch to a Pictures effect then the Effect Assist will show you the actual numbers for the model size. I'd have to check into why the minimal grid doesn't come out smaller for what you said you created.
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For the next release I've changed these corner points so that they have a minimum draw size so they can't shrink too small on larger models as well as increased the hotspot area to match to make it easier to grab when the grid has small squares. There is one thing I've noticed that I'm not sure I'll try to mess with is when you get to more dense grids like anything with more than 50 cells then sometimes when you drag or place a corner it moves when you let go because of roundoff error. The position has to get converted to a whole number percentage which then gets converted back to the position for display which can cause an issue when the cell size starts to approach less than 1% to 2%. The fix would require changing the morph to use positions with more decimal places and I'm not sure it's worth it.
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Thank you Gil. Did you happen to notice the grid size with relationship to the model group size?
I've been playing a little bit with the beta version(s) and I can really see a huge improvement in performance. You guys have done a wonderful job!
James
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Yes the Minimal Grid is different than Grid as per Preview in that the resulting model for Minimal Grid only contains the boundary of the encompassing models but Minimal Grid still uses the grid size in the box. So think of it as the sampling resolution for the models in the group. I reduced it to 100 and I saw a few of my pixel disappear because they must have lumped in with nearby pixels due to sampling.
Anyways I would hold off if you can on sequencing with model groups. Dan has some wonderful changes in store for us. He let us checkout some preliminary code and its awesome. I don't want to spoil too much of the surprise but it will reduce the number of models you need to work with because you will be able to change how an effect distributes onto the pixels on a per effect basis right on the grid. So no more of what I call proxy models.
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Perfect! I'm wanting to redo my sequences, so this "change" fits perfectly!
Thanks guys.
James
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