Sean Meighan

General => The Water Cooler => Topic started by: Lights On Fifth on November 05, 2014, 04:09:39 PM

Title: Preset effects
Post by: Lights On Fifth on November 05, 2014, 04:09:39 PM
Is it me or does anyone else have this problem? I know you can group effects but when I am sequencing in xlights is there a way you can save all the red effects in a group and then blue in another group and so on, it would be nice to be able to move an effect that you build into another color. I hope this makes sense.
Title: Re: Preset effects
Post by: flyinverted on November 05, 2014, 04:34:36 PM
Do a backup then use Notepad++ and open the xlights_rgbeffects.xml file.

It will be painfully obvious how/where to change what you need.   You can't currently move them from within NC.

The method inside the program to move one effect into a group is to make the desired effect active, then save it again to the group, then delete the original effect.

Title: Re: Preset effects
Post by: Lights On Fifth on November 06, 2014, 07:06:32 AM
Do a backup then use Notepad++ and open the xlights_rgbeffects.xml file.

It will be painfully obvious how/where to change what you need.   You can't currently move them from within NC.

The method inside the program to move one effect into a group is to make the desired effect active, then save it again to the group, then delete the original effect.

It would be a nice feature to be able to drag a red effect in the preset effect  to where you want it so all your red effects are in one place, and all your blue effects in the same place etc, etc.
Title: Re: Preset effects
Post by: sean on November 06, 2014, 09:03:29 AM
i think more Christmas presents are coming your way.

dave and i talked last night about presets. with opengl performance, we are going to allow you to pick a model (megatree, matrix) and there will be an animated thumbnail next to each of your models in the preset section.

standby for some new features coming.



All of this happened because the user "thevikester" sent his xlights_rgbeffects.xml file that had a gorgeous whole house effect. 300x 150 , he made it using the spreadsheet method. it took him days. He posted it , not to say "Look at my great whole house model" but to ask why one roofline had changed color. The reason was simple, his models didnt always start on a multiple of 3 channels.

Dave and I looked at that whole house model and got motivated to get one for ourselves. Dave put aside his future Falcon-16 v2 board (A board that can have 32 strings, each string can have 680 nodes. Due date spring next year). He put that board aside to create a whole house model for himself.

Spreadsheet method sucked so Dave built himself a excel macro.

Still not good enough, i mentioned how I had asked about a year ago, why we couldnt discover the x,y locations by looking at the screen. I didnt know how to code it. Dave, went away for one day and came back with the whole house model.

Now that we had the whole house model being built from the preview screen, dave did not like the way sizing and rotates were done. he didnt like that you cant just click and drag.

So all the new things you see came from dave wanting to build a whole house model , like we saw "thevikester" create. And he and I are too lazy to do it using the tools we have given all of you.

Being too lazy to type data into a grid in Vixen 2 was why I built Nutcracker 2.

So, it is good that you have lazy developers.

sean and dave
Title: Re: Preset effects
Post by: Ed Slonka Jr on November 06, 2014, 02:23:53 PM
Laziness – The Mother of Invention   :)

Or something like that, but seriously, thanks for all your hard work guys!!!

Can't wait to see what comes next.

Ed
Title: Re: Preset effects
Post by: lorajoslyn on November 11, 2014, 07:11:57 PM
I wish I had your laziness... I'd probably get so much more done!
Title: Re: Preset effects
Post by: bpducman on November 11, 2014, 07:34:48 PM
Sean I just don't know how you do it. For my self I think my life is being consumed into RGB's, and key strokes. But the killer is I really like it.

Keep the faith and keep on thinking free

Brad
Title: Re: Preset effects
Post by: sean on November 11, 2014, 11:14:24 PM
NO plans to sell XL/nc now or in the future.

. Dave and I are prototyping xl/nc 4.0. you will be impressed. Dave is getting nearly everything I wanted in a user interface from the last couple of years. It is going to be so much easier to use and hopefully very intuitive
Title: Re: Preset effects
Post by: bpducman on November 12, 2014, 06:50:24 AM
That sound great, really looking forward to all of your new stuff. But I was really referring to your brain not being tied down to any one idea and keep the ability to keep thinking free as in out of the box. But it is nice to hear about not selling anytime soon. There are a lot of people out there that have the ability to add to the process of more development and the idea that we are able to please a lot of people with our own talents at a very special time of the year using your software is fantastic.

again

Keep the faith and keep on thinking free

Brad


Title: Re: Preset effects
Post by: JonB256 on November 12, 2014, 08:57:03 AM
From a grammar standpoint, it would be "... keep on thinking freely" so I can understand Sean ' s error.
Title: Re: Preset effects
Post by: flyinverted on November 12, 2014, 10:15:28 AM
From a grammar standpoint, it would be "... keep on thinking freely" so I can understand Sean ' s error.

My grammar would never say something like that, but my grandpa, oh he's another story.
Title: Re: Preset effects
Post by: bpducman on November 12, 2014, 01:25:37 PM
I stand corrected. or is that correctly I stand