Hell of a time with this Star Wars import

[dwbarnett]

Pretty much about to give up on this. I'm so glad that most of the rest of seemed to have no issues, and are running the sequence.  Good for you.    Me...not so much.  I'll list what I've done: perhaps I'm missing something you can remind me to do.

I followed the Wiki info re importing someone else's sequence.

1. Put Logans seq. in a separate folder called Star Wars.  I also added my network.xml file, and the music file.
created another directory for the images. Changed show directory to the Star Wars directory to view Logan's sequence.

2. Watched the sequence several times, to try and get an idea of what elements would work for my layout.
wrote Logan's model names down to correlate with my models.

3. I then copied the starwars.xml into my show directory, and changed to my show directory. I created a new musical sequence.
4. I then slected import, the appropriate xml, and selected my models.
a. The floods imported fine
b. mini trees imported fine
c. Roof line stuff, I was only able to get my left eaves to import, the mid eaves and right eaves only show some effects after render. Mainly, the single strand string skip stuff.
5. Did an import on the mega tree. My tree is 24x150, so I imported/mapped strands 1-12 from Logan's seq., to my strands 7-18 on my seq. to try and centralize Logan's effects and images.
6. I finally imported the wholehouse stuff, that seemed to be OK. I then re-save everything.

7. On playback, I get the initial start of everything blue. When the light saber starts on the mega, I see bits and pieces of it.  The wholehouse is overriding the mega tree effects.  I can't seem to separate the tree from the wholehouse stuff.

8. After import, non of the images and several effects don't  show up on the mega tree.
9. I also wanted to have Logan's timings per his sequence. I looked at his xml and timings, and tried to copy/paste that section into my xml using notepad ++, nope...didn't work, caused XL/NC to crash.
ew-edited and took the timing stuff back out, the xml loaded OK again.

I have seen several vids you all have done to adapt Logan's seq. into your setup, so I know it can be done.

What am I missing here?   Hope everyone else had an easy go of your setup this year. Mine has been one from hell!  Nothing has gone right this year.  Still trying to put up the show, have 2 seq. done.

Not ready to throw in the towel, but getting close!

Any thoughts or suggestions appreciated, preferably without the condescending tone.

Best,
David

[Dave Nibeck]

I struggled with this one too (it was the first I tried to import).  What I found I had to do was make a whole house model X mega tree to import his whole house onto mine.  Not sure why the 'off' did not work to mask the tree.  For the pictures, you have click each picture and point to the new directory.

I didn't the eaves but what I suspect is your having a similar issue with whole house. 
 

[Phrog30]

The pictures are pointing to his directory. After you import, open your xml file and do a search and replace. If you want, I can help on this, just attach your xml file and state your path.

The light sabers in the beginning are at the node level, so you must copy over that stuff too.

It sounds like you have most working.

James

[Phrog30]

Oh, I just re-read your post. I think your problem is using his xml file.

It took me about an hour, but using model copy, which is a row copy, I would copy over one model/row at a time. There may be faster ways, but this was easiest for me.

James

[mararunr]

Logan's wholehouse does not include his tree.  Does your wholehouse include your tree?  If so, then it will overrun the tree.  Remember Logan including his rgbeffects xml as well as the sequence xml so you can create a new directory, copy both into that new directory, open xlights and change to your new directory, set up a bunch of bogus universes on the network tab and then see Logan's completely setup in the layout tab and run his xml on his display layout to figure things out.


Something else to consider if you want to go to this level is xml files are just plain text files with formatting tags.  Get notepad++ and you can open xml files and cut/copy/paste/delete right in the someone else's xml before opening in your desired layout.  Not saying it's for everybody, but if you are comfortable, it can be quicker.

[Gilrock]

I wouldn't try to import that way David.  Here's my method:

1)  Place the starwars.xml into your show directory.
2)  Create a subdirectory and copy all the star wars images into it.
3)  Open the starwars.xml in Notepad++ and scroll down to the effects section and find a Picture effect.
4)  Copy the front part of the path to where Logan had his image files stored.
5)  Do a search and replace of the path you copied with the new directory path you created in your show directory.  Make sure the path looks correct in the file and then save the xml file.
6)  Here's the trick....don't create a new sequence....open up the starwars.xml.
7)  You may get a bunch of message about missing models and just hit ok but then you should get to the dialogs that give you the option to either delete the model from the sequence or map the model to one of the models you have defined.  That's what you want to do.
  For every model select either Delete or Map it to one of your models.  It's helps to already know where you are going to map them.
9)  Now you're pretty much done except you may want to copy some of the data from one model to another so just use the Copy Model / Paste Model feature on the Row Heading right-click menu to copy data from one row to another.
10)  Save with Render and play the sequence and enjoy happy clapping customers.

[dwbarnett]

Thanks everyone, Special thanks to you Gil.

Using your method Gil, do I map the mega tree the same way.  His is 12 strands, mine is 24, do I manually import and map the tree separately?

This is what I needed, a step by step.  Everything has gone all wrong for me on my show this year, I'm pretty wiped out about all this right now. Determined to try and do a show though.

Best,
David

[Gilrock]

Yes when his megatree model pops up just select the name of your mega tree.  I mapped his data to a 12x50 and a 32x42 tree and both looked great.

[dwbarnett]

Thank You Gil

Best,
David

[arw01]

I'll ditto having some issues trying to copy it over too, took a while messing with rendering to get it to actually ouput.  Good tip in there on the mega tree and the whole house model.

I was in the process of figuring out where Logan's windows are relative to what I wanted for windows, when I last messed with it.

Gil you mentioned in another thread deleting models you would not use in the xml, do you just delete the model and leave the effects for it, or delete the effects for that model as well?

David and Sean are working on an import routine, and judging from David's change from 3.0 to 4x it should be an awesome tool when done.

[JonB256]

Yes when his megatree model pops up just select the name of your mega tree.  I mapped his data to a 12x50 and a 32x42 tree and both looked great.

I mapped Logan's Mega-Tree to a Horizontal Matrix 40x30.  The lights sabers are horizontal, but everything else worked on my "Garage Matrix"

I mostly used the same method as Gil. I don't have as many totally pixel elements as Logan but I'm still happy. First two children who saw it laughed and giggled a lot. Success!

The beauty of using my FPP master and remotes is that I can tweak and tweak and tweak and then update before it runs the next time.

[Gilrock]

Alan I deleted the effects for the models also because I wasn't sure if it would hiccup our program otherwise.

[plaberge]

Using your method Gil, do I map the mega tree the same way.  His is 12 strands, mine is 24, do I manually import and map the tree separately?

I also have a 24 strand mega tree. Direct import works but the lightsabers are on the left side of the tree. To fix it, click "Toggled Strands" on your megatree model and move effects to more central strands. While doing this, I expanded Logan's effects to cover a larger number of strands on my megatree. Note that if you do this, you have to shorten the duration of each strand effect to maintain the timing. The lightsabers move faster because of this but it still looks good.

My set-up is quite a bit different from Logan's and Gil's, so I had to do a lot of creative mapping to get it to look right. After my initial base mapping mapping (i.e., megatree, arches, roof line), I found that the best way to do this was to have one copy of Xlights running on my model and another on on Logan's model. I then copied various effect from Logan's to mine  (as Gil described) until I found something that looked good on mine.

Overall, it looks real nice. I'll post a video of my adaptation in a few days. in Logan's original thread.

[logandc99]

I'm sorry to hear that you have had a lot of grief trying to get the sequence running on your display. I have never imported a sequence from another setup so I'm not familiar with the process and so unfortunately I cannot provide any useful info. However the others who have posted above are way more qualified to help you with that process than I.
I hope you get it running soon  .

[drlucas]

The only issue I've experienced was that Logan hasn't created more sequences!!

The approach Gil outlined is the process I took. I think next year I'll make a small P10 matrix that is portrait vs landscape and see if I can map/mirror  the mega trees to it.

I'm definitely spending some time this winter to figure out how to really maximize the different layers and features in xlights4.

I think I miss the Thursday night sessions that Sean hosts.


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