Updated show not showing in the preview - solved

[jnealand]

Using 3.6.13
I have sequences created using a whole house with audacity timing marks and they are in the show and working fine.

BUT....

the effects on my non RGB elements do not coordinate well with the RGB effects so I created a new whole house model with only the RGB effects.  I create a new sequence for the same music and specify that I have an xml file.  That file loads with the old whole house effect.  I add a second model call WH RGB only.  Then copy the whole column from the original wholehouse and then delete the original whole display element from the grid.  Then I save the song with a new name.  That works well.

now I open the song again and add the 4 models for my mega tree - one for each color.  I pick effects for each time slot that I think will look better with the RGB whole house effects.  I save the file again, but when I go to preview my mega tree never shows up in the preview window except before I hit the play button.  I have deleted the xseq file and recreated the sequence again using the revised xml file but still do not get mega tree effects showing.

[attachment deleted by admin]

[jnealand]

After being online with Sean, this problem stems from a lack of understanding on my part about how xlights works.  I thought I finally had my arms wrapped around the color issues when using the test function and what happens with color when using whole house models, but made bad assumptions on my one color LED strings.  I thought I just needed to turn on the color red which would be the first rgb color for the channel I has assigned to the that string, but that does not work.  You actually need to turn on the color that the string is assigned to in the model.  Badly explained, but my problem is solved.

[sean]

another way of stating it

Nutcracker ALWAYS creates rgb effects, even if your entire show is single color props.
Our effect generations have 24bit RGB color values.
The way Matt solved how do you have multi  color effects and single color props?
Create a prop using single color red, single color blue, single color green or single color white. And have that prop respond only to its channel.

Suppose you have a bars effect with red
you have 4 mini trees, single color Red, Green,Blue, White

if you put the bars effect on all 4:
1) The Red tree responds to any value in the red channel. So this will light up when the red bar goes by
2)  The Green tree responds to any value in the green channel. So nothing lights up
3)   The Blue tree responds to any value in the blue channel. So nothing lights up
5) The white tree responds to any time that RGB all equal each other.  it will only light up with a
value like 50,50,50, 120,120,120, 255,255,255 . So since we have red (255,0,0) , it doesnt light up.
If you have 50,50,51 then that is not a pure white (or gray) color and the white tree would not respond to those.

BTW, if you turn on sprakle or have any white color, your Red, Green and Blue trees will respond. they have a channel matching the RGB they watch.

[Gilrock]

I think the output might look nicer if for the white only channels you add the red, green, and blue then divide by 3 to get an On percentage instead of requiring all 3 channels to be exactly the same.  Then the effects would look like they were dimming and would probably result in less questions from users.