Need help understanding Model Group Layout Modes and Grid Size

[nmiller0113]

I've looked and looked and could not fight any decent documentation around anywhere for this.  It's not even broken down in the manual.  The reason I ask is because I'm having a heck of a time with morphs across my whole house model group.

Does anyone have a definition of any of the nodes and how Grid Size relates to it?  I think I understand what "minimal grid" means but how does the Grid Size of 400 relate to that as it seems it defaults to 400 no matter how small of an item I place in it and the effect assist window always shows a grid size completely unrelated.  As an example.  I have 3 10x10 matrices in my yard all right next to each other.  It defaults the Grid Size to 400 in minimal grid Layout Mode, but if I look at the effect assist window it shows an unbelievable amount of cells, too many to count without a huge screen to blow it up, well beyond 1000 in grid size.  In fact.  It looks the exact same size in effect assist as my Whole House group also set to minimal grid and defaulting to 400, but it is definitely well beyond 400.

So I am either completely misunderstanding this or I'm hitting some strange bug.  This is affecting the way I do morphs across the whole house.  In Superstar I would often start morphs with the whole head showing to start and then it would cover the entire house and move from there.  I'd, of course, have my head size set to cover the grid size, and that actually leads me to a morphing question I'll ask in another thread as it appears the max head size is 100.  Anyway...I'd love some clarity on this subject and why Effect Assist looks so off and oversized.  Thanks!

[Gilrock]

Use minimal grid for a whole house model.  Ignore the 400 because grid size is meaningless when you select minimal grid.  You can't make a head cover the house I don't think I let the slider go that high.  If you want to cover the whole house there are other ways.  Effect Assist really is meant for smaller model sizes.  For huge models you got to make the window really big for the cells to be able to show up.  If your doing your whole house usually you only need full sweep settings anyways which you can do with the quickset combo box. 

[nmiller0113]

Thanks for the quick response Gil.  One thing I did notice was that if I made it minimal grid, if I adjusted the default down to something like 100, it would change the grid to 100.  So it does affect it even with it set to minimal grid.  Maybe that is by design, but I thought I'd mention it.

I'm still confused why the effect assist window defaults to such a HUGE grid for my whole house.  My whole house setup is nowhere near as large as it makes it in minimal grid.  Whenever I do a morph across the entire house, even just a basic sweep for 1 second, it essentially brings my computer to its knees trying to render it and this computer isn't old or slow.  I can't help but think it doesn't have something to do with how it is creating the grid.  Could there possibly be a bug?  My house layout isn't that big at all.

Here is the effect I've tried to do in xLights that I've done in Superstar shown here:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/s0i2avclji8gotw/Head%20at%20start.mp4?dl=0

As you can see from the video I've got the head showing 110 pixels, but could have been any number of pixels, across of blue at the start and then changing to red with the tail.  If there is an easy way to do this in xLights, that would be awesome.  Unfortunately I'm not doing a full sweep all the time.

[Gilrock]

The effect assist is drawing whatever the size of the model is.  Model groups can be huge like 400 pixels on one side.  I've never tried changing the size so I didn't think it affected it for minimal grid.  I've never had a problem just leaving it at 400 and using minimal grid.  I just test on my whole house model and it's like 2 seconds to render and its a 400x266 model.  If you drop a picture effect on a model you can see it's size in the effect assist window stats.  I really think the morph is a bad choice for the effects I see you doing in the video.  Checkout the curtain effect and you need to experiment with layering and masking to create a lot of fancy options.  I don't have time to try to create every little thing people think they want to do.

[nmiller0113]

Got it Gil!  Thanks, you definitely helped a lot.

Just one last question because I'm curious.  How did you find out the exact grid size of your whole house model as 400x266?  Is there a file I can reference to find that rather than counting the grid boxes one by one?  Sorry if that's a dumb question, I just couldn't find that info anywhere.

Regardless, I've got a better grasp on all of this now and how to do use other effects rather than morphs to get the same results I had in Superstar.  Thanks again!

[Gilrock]

I thought you might ask how I knew the size.  That's why I explained it in the sentence right after I gave that number.  You have to drop the picture effect on the model and then bring up the Effect Assist window if it's not already active.  It has a section that shows filename, image size, and model size so you can see the exact size being used.  I think one of the improvements this year will be better model management and that info might be viewable for all models.

[nmiller0113]

Doh, thanks Gil.  I completely missed that part.

Great help and great development.  Thanks for all you and the xLights team do!