Enhancements to preview for placing lights.

[dwbarnett]

Would love to see something similar to what the old Holiday lights designer had in regards to laying out the lights on image.
 
You had a scale tool that was used on a 3 foot area of the pic. Usually the front door. Once scaled, didn't matter size of image;you could then click and drag to place lighting on roofline etc. Since scaled, you knew how long the strand of lights were on the layout.  Also, when setting up the light choice, it gave you a choice of spacing for the light strand.

Example: right now when I want to place a strand of CCB(Cosmic Color Bulbs) on my roofline, I can only selct the amount of nodes/strands, so that when the strand is on the the roofline, it doesn't represent the bulb layout as it would look.  Too compressed.  If we could at least choose spacing as well, that may help somewhat.

Or if possible, since we are using elements anyway, perhaps some common set lengths for RGB strand layouts.

IE CCB is 100 RGB bulbs and the strand is a total of 26.5 feet per strand.  Something along those lines may help as well.

Thanks for your consideration.   

Here is a link to the Holidaysoft website. This is the site for Holiday Lights Designer.  It will give you an idea.

http://www.holidaysoft.com/

Best,
David William Barnett

[Gilrock]

You can adjust the scale of each model to squeeze or stretch it into place.  If it looks too compressed trying to squeeze 26 feet into 1" of screen space then what would we do?  Show less lights?  Also that 3' scale thing would only get you close.  My upper and lower roofline have at least a 25' difference in depth so 3' on the lower part of my house doesn't equal 3' in the upper part of my house in a photo.  You really gotta go full blown 3D modeling of your house.  I couldn't tell if that program can do that but I joking the other day that users were going to want us to provide 3D modeling of the their house.  The screenshot I saw showed a 3D yard but the house was a 2D photo painted on a surface in the 3D space.  I'd love to code up a visualizer like that someday but probably not gonna happen soon from me.

[dwbarnett]

Got it Gil.

I'll figure out a way to try and represent my CCB's

Best,
David

[Gilrock]

Well that program does look pretty cool from the screenshots.  If I was gonna try to upgrade the Preview someday I'd probably buy that program just to get some ideas.

[dwbarnett]

Hi Gil.  I thought Michael Collins did a good job on HLD. Unfortunately, he didn't get too much support from the lightshow folks; so he pretty much took his ball and went home.

Latest version 4.0.1.9 was quite stable.  Michael has made some periodic postings of a new version coming out this year.  However, if you look at his history for talking up releases and new features; very seldom does it occur.

If he had support for RGB, I would use HLD in a heartbeat. I thought it was a very simple program to use and setup. 

Man, how cool would it be if you could get the code from Michael.  I believe you could have one heck of a preview.  Oh well, dare to dream.

One of the biggest drawbacks to HLD, if you had too many elements, it would slow down playback somewhat.

I still have it loaded, if you have any questions; be happy to try and answer them for you.

Best,
David

[mararunr]

Just to add my two cents worth - I would like the ability to be able to zoom in and out in the preview tab so I can put things in their right place.  Vixen does a great job with the ability to be able to zoom in to draw the really small stuff (yes, some things need to be smaller than the "1" size in XL) and be able to precisely put elements that are actually side by side (versus overlapping on the edges like I end up doing in XL)....don't get me wrong, XL is my number 1 sequencing tool and I absolutely love it.  Just try to provide constructive feedback for improvement.

[Gilrock]

I never made it past the setup page in Vixen so I never got to see what the program looks like.