window outline

[bassnbuck]

Is there anything in the works to make window and door outlines easier to make chases?

[flyinverted]

You can make it easy many different ways.

Make many models out of the same window edges.

All verticals could be one model. All horizontals could be another model.
Each 4 sides of a window one model and all windows together another model.
Odds/evens another 2 models. 
This will allow for MANY more possibilities.   It's already there, it's just how you apply the creative process.


I just created 3 windows and made a whole house model of all 3 Windows. Many effects look great on all windows as single model.

Butterfly, Spirals, Bars, Curtain, Single strand.

[Gilrock]

What does the chase need to look like...do you mean something that spins around like in a circle?  You could create a model that's  straight line and map it to the same channels and use that element to put effects on and then they would spin around the window/door.

[jnealand]

It is called "multi-model".  i.e., Make more than one model for the same element(2) and use the same channels.  Only make one of the model(s) "part of my display" so there is only one thing showing in the preview.  Here is a quick example.  I have 6 porch columns with 23 nodes running vertical on them.  I have 6 models labeled PC1 - PC6 using a straight line and place them on the display.  To sequence them I make another model that is a 6 column x 23 row matrix.  Now I can put bars and spirals on the matrix and all the columns have the lights and colors coordinated in an easy to use single model.

[bassnbuck]

thank you for the reply i will have to try that.  so what i am hearing is that i shouldnt use the window outline feature for the model?  instead i would use single strand or something like that and build windows that way.  gilrock yes i was looking for circular effects with multi colors so i could have all 10 of my window outline doing the same thing.

[Gilrock]

Here's a way to think about it.  When you create a window outline internally we represent that as if it were a rectangular matrix.  So when you drop an effect on the window model we render the effect as if it were a matrix and then we only draw the outer edge of the matrix.  If you create the model as a straight line then we are still representing it as a matrix it's just that the height of the matrix is 1 so when you drop an effect you have a better chance of it looking like it chasing around the window.  If you drop the same effect on the window it would sweep across the entire window shape instead of around it.

Everything we model is internally stored as an X/Y array so that's how the whole house model is created.  It's just another matrix that's the size of your whole display or whatever elements you chose to include in that snapshot.  It really simplifies the code because the algorithms that render the effects actually have no idea what type of model you dropped them on.   They just scale to whatever width and height that model's matrix array represents and then the output routines know which pixel in that array need to actually be displayed.  This allows you to drop the same effect on top of any size or type model.

[jnealand]

Create your windows as a window outline and set them to part of my display.  Then create a vertical or horizontal matrix for your windows that is not "part of my display", in my case it would be a 4 row by 64 column horizontal.  I can then sequence using the matrix with vertical bars and watch the colors go around the outline of the window with all windows in parallel.   All the part of my display does is put a model in the preview window.  When it is not in the preview you can still sequence to it with no issues.  The models that are in the preview with the same channel numbers will display how you want them to.