Sean Meighan
Software => Xlights Setup => Topic started by: Santacarl on January 14, 2022, 04:44:59 PM
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Hi All,
Not sure if this is the right place to post this but I thought I'd try it...
I'm trying to play with Moving Head 3D beams to see if I might want to consider using them.
I am struggling trying to figure out how it works. I placed the model on the layout but have no clue what the settings should be or how to set that up.
Has anyone done a video to walk people through using this feature? I'm at a loss on what I'm trying to do....
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Did you checkout the videos on xLights.org? I know I did a mini presentation that was recorded years ago
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Thanks Gil....Hadn't been over to that site in a while and I forgot to check....
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For a guy who often posts that he does not hold his mouth just right when working on stuff I'm surprised you would want to get into something very expensive and potentially very complicated. LOL
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For a guy who often posts that he does not hold his mouth just right when working on stuff I'm surprised you would want to get into something very expensive and potentially very complicated. LOL
Well...I might be dumb as a bag of rocks but I DO try to learn new stuff....it just takes me a bit longer to get there on some of the more techie aspects of the hobby but I'm relentless and never give up! When I work on things I usually end up breaking something in order to figure out what NOT to do.....before I 'fix' it. ;D
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Us old guys never give up, maybe we just have to much time on our hands or maybe not since I never seem to have enough time. Keep going Carl, I'll be watching for your success video.
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I'm in the same boat. I bought a DMX head to try out and I'm having issues with the basic setup. I have some older "RPM" DMX controllers, one is an Enttec open USB clone, the other is a multicast ethernet 4 port bridge. They configure properly (chan. 1 to 510) but when I add a head model, it want's to start at 511 and says it can't be mapped.
-Craig
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Unfortunately since the setup tab was upgraded to the controllers tab things are a little more complex to the point I can no longer just tell people how to set things up. I have to sit there playing with it myself to get something working. I also noticed the program seems to be reserving the first 510 channels but I was able to override it by forcing a model to channel 1. A lot of this changes based on whether you are selecting a controller that supports the auto layout and have some of those boxes checked.
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Us old guys never give up, maybe we just have to much time on our hands or maybe not since I never seem to have enough time. Keep going Carl, I'll be watching for your success video.
Yeah buddy...guilty as charged.
Thanks to the reminder to check on the xLight.org site I found a couple of videos by Tom Betgeorge to get me started. Then I did a search and found his site and bought one of his sequences that uses the 3D heads. From there I reverse engineered his setup and adapted it to mine. It took me a few days of tinkering and I got hung up on one thing I overlooked in the setup but after pulling my hair out for a day or so I found it and just successfully imported his sequence into my layout and it works.
I wanted to see if I could get it into Xlights configured correctly before I got serious about considering actually adding them to the display. I've got to say that one of my biggest concerns now is how tedious it is to sequence these things once you get them set up. You literally have to think in 3 dimensions and sequence that way. It reminds me of the really old days when I had to learn Assembly language to program an early computer. It was painful.... I'm not sure I want to experience that type of pain again...as sequencing these things seems, so far, much more time consuming...
Another consideration is where to place these in the display. I'm too old to be crawling around on a steep roof so they'd have to go in the yard....I was originally thinking these need to be above or behind the display and I'm not sure how they'd look placed in the middle of the display at ground level... I think lots of head scratching is about to ensue before I make a final decision....
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Unfortunately since the setup tab was upgraded to the controllers tab things are a little more complex to the point I can no longer just tell people how to set things up. I have to sit there playing with it myself to get something working. I also noticed the program seems to be reserving the first 510 channels but I was able to override it by forcing a model to channel 1. A lot of this changes based on whether you are selecting a controller that supports the auto layout and have some of those boxes checked.
Gil...if I'm following you I think my work around for this was to limit the size of the universe controlling the heads to the actual number of channels assigned to the heads. I haven't purchased any of the props yet so I don't know if that works in the hardware or not...but seems to work fine in XL...
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No I'm just saying I experienced something similar the other day I added a few models and there were no models assigned to the 1 to 510 channel range my first model started at 511 and I'm not up to speed on why that is happening which causes me to get frustrated not knowing how the program works and it seemed harder than the old days.
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No I'm just saying I experienced something similar the other day I added a few models and there were no models assigned to the 1 to 510 channel range my first model started at 511 and I'm not up to speed on why that is happening which causes me to get frustrated not knowing how the program works and it seemed harder than the old days.
I fully understand your frustration about not knowing how the program works.... I can't count the times that I've posted a similar comment. I mostly get frustrated with myself for not being tech savvy enough to understand.
I thought I had these moving heads figured out and while I did figure out how to control them collectively I ran into another head scratcher when trying to control them individually under 1 effect....so I'm frustrated yet again.....I suspect it has something to do with beat tracks or note onset but I can't figure it out....YET. :(
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I thought I had these moving heads figured out and while I did figure out how to control them collectively I ran into another head scratcher when trying to control them individually under 1 effect....so I'm frustrated yet again.....I suspect it has something to do with beat tracks or note onset but I can't figure it out....YET. :(
Well...figured it out...you have to dive down to the individual node level..... :-[
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No I'm just saying I experienced something similar the other day I added a few models and there were no models assigned to the 1 to 510 channel range my first model started at 511 and I'm not up to speed on why that is happening which causes me to get frustrated not knowing how the program works and it seemed harder than the old days.
Yea, something's definitely broken. I arbitrarily jumped back to 2020.1 and everything came out fine. Guess I shouldn't be using these vintage controllers.
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Well...figured it out...you have to dive down to the individual node level..... :-[
No you shouldn't need to do that. What effect are you trying to drop on the model? You gotta have at least the color channels mapped on the model.
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Well...figured it out...you have to dive down to the individual node level..... :-[
No you shouldn't need to do that. What effect are you trying to drop on the model? You gotta have at least the color channels mapped on the model.
Well...I'm using the same setup as Tom used in his sequence. Basically I'm dropping a DMX model onto the pan and tilt channels and a color wash with 2 colors onto the dimmers channel. By going to the node level I can select when the DMX effect starts and stops motion on each moving head. It works fine. Not sure what you mean by "Mapped on the model"... I've probably done that but just don't recognize the terminology....
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Well I haven't seen how Tom is doing it so I can't say if its the best way to operate. I think you meant you are dropping "DMX Effects" on the pan and tilt channels. But the DMX Effect has access to all the channels on a DMX Model so you can just drop the DMX Effect at the model level and then move the slider for the channel(s) you want to affect. Without seeing your setup I can't tell if your issue is because you have all the moving heads in a group and are trying to sequence at the group level.
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Well I haven't seen how Tom is doing it so I can't say if its the best way to operate. I think you meant you are dropping "DMX Effects" on the pan and tilt channels. But the DMX Effect has access to all the channels on a DMX Model so you can just drop the DMX Effect at the model level and then move the slider for the channel(s) you want to affect. Without seeing your setup I can't tell if your issue is because you have all the moving heads in a group and are trying to sequence at the group level.
Yeah I meant DMX Effects.....
I guess I'm doing it at a group level.....In layout I created a group for most of the controls (tilt, pan, dimmer, etc.) on the moving head using the "Single String" effect. Then I let the number of strings represent each moving head. Then I used the "Use Start Channel" and "Indiv Start Chan"; one for each moving head and assigned the corresponding channel for the controls (tilt, pan, dimmer, etc).
Then you include those in a "View" in sequencer....from there you can double click to get at the nodes.
Sorry if that was hard to follow....
The trick, using this setup, is to control of individual heads by drilling down to the node level on the string with each 'node' representing a different moving head.
There might be a better way of doing it but once you figure it out it's pretty simple. You can still do group control at the upper level...you only have to drill down to the node if you want individual control.
I've been playing with these now for a couple of days. I was hoping, once I understood how to sequence for these, it would get faster. I'm finding it extremely tedious to sequence these....I'm starting to think it's not worth the effort as you have to put so much time into sequencing....I'm finding that I dread tinkering with them and takes the fun out of it... I'll keep playing with it for a while....maybe I'll get faster with time....so the jury is still out as to whether or not I go down this road and put them in the display.