Dabil's 2017 Christmas Show Community WIP Thread

[Dabil]

Hello all,

This is my first year doing a Christmas display, and I have received so much from this community that I wanted to give back. So this is my way of doing so. I am designing this first post in this thread as a living document, which means I am going to continue to add to this first post as new ideas are introduced. I will also place the completed sequences that are set up for my house in this first post so that people don't have to scour the entire thread to get all the parts. For anyone who would like to contribute, I recommend you make a post with the word reserved, so that you can continue your fist post as a living document as well. Then you can come back and continue to update your first post with completed sequences as well.

Mission:

The mission of this thread is to create my 2017 Christmas Light Show and to provide new sequences for the community to use as well. There will also be what I consider enhancements or alternate versions of existing previously shared sequences by other authors placed here.

Community:

I want to stress that I am opening this up to the community. So anyone and everyone is welcome to post in this thread. There is no such thing as posting too much, and I want to stress that "Phase II: Storming" rules do not apply here (or any other phase of storming), you are welcome to post as much as you like. You are welcome to make as many suggestions or share as many ideas as you like. I would ask anyone and everyone who posts here to avoid discouraging others. I myself as a first year light enthusiast am very excited, so I understand any new people who may share in my enthusiasm. Just please remember that this is supposed to be a WIP thread (ie Work In Progress), so while opinions or requests are welcome, I would prefer to have you add those at the same time as you are adding content. This is a suggestion though, not a rule.

What to share:

One of my core beliefs is that what you fail to support you condemn to die. And since there is so much about this community I love, I want to see it thrive. I happen to believe by sharing my sequences I will be supporting this hobby in an important way. The fact of the matter is, without quality sequences readily available, it is much harder for newcomers to get involved. And we all know there are strength in numbers in the form of buying power.

That being said, I do not support the sharing of paid content. I know first hand how much work it is to put together a quality sequence. And so I would ask you to not share any paid content without the permission of the person who you paid. While some of the sequences I will be placing here I am using paid content in, I will not share that paid content with the community. So if you download one of the sequences and it is missing portions, make sure you check to see if it might have required paid content that you will need to purchase, or if it may just be unfinished.

However since I have made many modifications to virtually all of the sequences I have purchased, I will share those altered sequences with individuals who can provide verifiable proof that they purchased the paid content, in the event you would prefer the altered sequence I am using.

Methodology:

I have an ambitious first year. I am currently working on many different sequences. Some of which I doubtfully will have time to finish before this Christmas season. But the way I work is this, sometimes I get an idea or inspiration, and so I grab xlights and sequence that idea out. So I have a number of sequences that have a few simple parts. I will place those here with the idea that someone else may want to work on it as well. I recommend that if any of you do this as well, please share those mini sequence with us. Because you never know who you are going to inspire. A simple part by one person, leads to another person who has a few ideas to contribute, which then inspires another, and finally you end up with a sequence that is nearly finished. So this thread is not just for completing sequences for this season, but also for seasons to come.

And please don't think that the songs I am listing that I am working on, are the only songs that we are going to work on here. I am going to work on Mariah Carey's "All I want for Christmas" because it is my wife's favorite Christmas song, but if you don't want to work on it or use it, then don't. You vote on what songs we are going to complete, by what you donate your time on. So no need to get community approval for what you are working on. Just grab a song and share your results at whatever stage you have the ambition and/or talent to get it to.

Links:

When posting any new sequences in this thread please post the following links:

1) A link to where the music can be downloaded or purchased. Please do not support piracy by including links to illegal downloads. If you purchase a song and alter it, please do like I do, and only share the altered version with people who purchase the original song. Altering a song does not make it yours.

2) A link to any paid content that you are basing your work on. I have a number of sequences that I purchased a super star mega tree sequence for, and then built the whole house sequence around that. Again do not supply paid content without the authors permission.

3) A good way to share a sequence that contains paid content like I describe above, please use a screen recorder such as iSpring Free Cam 8 to record your xlights preview, and upload your video to a steaming service such as YouTube or Vimeo. That way people can see the complete sequence you are sharing in full effect.

New People:

Maybe you are like me, and you saw a computer sequenced display last season for the first time, and got inspired to pick up this hobby, or maybe you have been slowly learning how to do this over the last few seasons, but haven't made any hardware purcheses yet. While lurkers are always welcome here, I would like to inspire you to get involved in someway no matter who you are. Not everyone has the same talents. Maybe you are the boss at sequencing MegaTrees, or maybe you can sequence leaping arches that steal the show (I think I read that somewhere once on this forum, will try to give you credit for that statement once I have time to look up who said it). Or maybe you just like making animated pixel art, or enjoy mixing up music collage's. Some people on here may enjoy doing the timing tracks for singing faces, and yet some may have no sequencing talent at all, but have some amazing Google Foo skills, no matter, I am sure there is a way for you to get involved. If you could just chime in and let people know what you could do, then you may end up seeing requests start showing up for your involvement. A quality sequence takes a lot of time to make, and even those that are amazing sequencers, don't have the time to do it all themselves.

Songs:

Although I have run out of time to paste any content here as of now, I will at least post a list of the songs I am currently working on.


Here are the ones I have a complete, nearly complete, or a significant portion done for, note that some listed began life as imports of sequences done by another author, in particular LoganDC99. Special thanks to Logan for all that he has contributed. Some of these contain paid content from HolidaySequences.com:

Amazing Grace (2008 Party Version) + VIDEO
Blue Christmas - inspired by local light show - VIDEO
Can't Stop This Feeling (LoganDC99) - VIDEO
Christmas Can Can - Paid Content + VIDEO
THX minion intro- me original
Dreams of the fireflies (On A Christmas Night) - Paid Content
Get Back Up Again - Trolls Movie - me original
Holly Jolly Christmas - Burl Ives - inspired by local light show
Let it Snow - Baby It's Cold Outside (LoganDC99 update)
Light of Christmas - mix of my original and LoganDC99's sequence + Paid Content + VIDEO
MJ Mix (LoganDC99)
Queen of the Winter Night - me original
Sound of Silence - Trolls movie version - me original + updated singing faces made by LoganDC99
Star Wars - Original musical score - me original
Star Wars Funk (LoganDC99 + Me updating light sabers) + VIDEO
THX Robot intro - me original - VIDEO
September - Trolls movie (LoganDC99 Update)
William Tell Overture - inspired by local light show + VIDEO
You're a Mean One Mr Grinch - Burl Ives - Paid Content + VIDEO

Here are the mini-sequences that I just have at the idea stage.

A Mad Russian's Christmas
Carol of the Bells
Carol of the Bells (Instrumental)
Christmas Canon
Hyperspin Retro Arcade Experience
Queen of the Winter Night
Santa Impossible (A Mission Impossible/Arthur Christmas collage)
You're Welcome - Moana Movie
You're a Mean One Mr Grinch - Jim Carey from Grinch movie

As you can see I have been busy since the end of January when I first picked up Xlights. Although I don't have a lot of time right now to add content, I will slowly begin to add the content I am listing here to the thread. As for today, my lunch hour is nearly over.

EDIT on 05/09/17: added vastly cleaner Dabil's Star Wars Funk.zip. Also fixed a numerous problems in it where I had imported several different sequence parts onto a single channel. If you previously downloaded this sequence, you might want to chuck that one and get this one instead.

[Dabil]

I am currently in the beginning of doing a sequence I am calling Santa Impossible. My current idea is to use the Mission Impossible theme song with this Arthur Christmas Easter Egg in the middle.

The mission impossible part would feature Santa sneaking around delivering presents stealthily. Here are some images I have put together for that part that I think may be of interest. I got the idea for these from an old Sega Genesis Video Game I used to play called Daze Before Christmas:

Anyway that is my idea, if you have other ideas for these animations I would be really interested in hearing about them, or seeing a sequence containing them. Feel free to pillage these for your own projects. I will continue adding to them as I get time. I want to add an animation of him bent over throwing presents over his shoulder for example. Maybe doing a tornado type spin like the taz does.


EDIT on 05/09/17 Added a large red and blue box images

[Dabil]

This is a partial sequence that I have started on for Amazing Grace 2008 Party Version by Yule. I decided to do this sequence when I saw the Holdman Christmas Lights Version of the song. I will probably cut the sound track down to half like Holdman Christmas lights did. I think I saw somewhere that the author of the Holdman Christmas lights was giving that sequence away, but it was in LOR and when I looked at it I think he wasn't using pixels. So I thought it would be difficult to import into my sequence since I am an all pixel show.

Anyway here is a link to the Holdman Christmas Lights Website

Amazon Song Link

[Dabil]

Trolls True Colors mp3 link

I have already finished the singing face timings. Got a concept video where I was playing with some effects for it here:

True Colors - Trolls Movie- me original using updated singing faces made by LoganDC99 + VIDEO

I think this has the potential to be a very pretty sequence. Just make sure you get the movie version of this song from the sound track, which is track 9 as the other one does not contain Poppy (Anna Kendrick) vocals.

[Dabil]

I just added my updated version of LoganDC's Star Wars Funk to the first post. Video

I added bitmapped light sabers for extra realism. (Posted below). I am also thinking of creating a full bodied light saber dual between Luke and Vader for those people who have larger Matrixes to use instead of the plain light sabers. An example of what those images might look like is attached as well as the bitmaps of the light sabers I used.

To make it easier for new people, Logan's original sequence can be found here: Forum Post or his Dropbox

[Dabil]

I know I said this was a Christmas Thread, but I may just be starting my light show this Halloween, so I thought I might start working on a Halloween sequence or two, and really, what song would be more fitting than Ghostbusters Original Theme Song by Ray Parker Jr?

I was never one for the creepy or sexy halloween stuff, I prefer to keep it light hearted and fun. In that vain, here is a singing face that could be used for that. I designed this face for a larger matrix, maybe 50x50 or bigger. I will try to create a video demo for it later. But for now here are the images. I included my original source image and logo. It would be awesome if someone already had a Ghostbusters Singing Timing Track done that they could share.

Edit 05/17/17: The more I look at these the more blah I think about them. Definately not my best work. The problem was that I thought I was starting with a clean png image I downloaded from the internet. It wasn't, and the more I look at it the more the artifacts and jaggy edges jump out at me. Expect a complete proper redraw of this Ghostbuster singing face in the future.

[Dabil]

Over the last week I have been working on the song "The Christmas Can-Can" by Straight No Chaser.

MP3 Here

Paid Content Here

Demo Video Here: updated on 05/17/17

I like to keep things light hearted after all my wife and I have 6 kids. When I was watching the previews at holidaysequences.com this one made my 3 year old and 6 year old crack up, so it became a must have for me.

If you watched the video and are wondering why the faces aren't moving in parts, not a glitch, just not finished with the singing timelines. This is one that I had altered the paid content extensively, so if you like my version better, provide verifiable proof that you purchased the sequence and I will share my altered version with you.

I am attaching what I have so far although this one isn't quite finished yet. If anyone wants to finish the singing faces, be my guest!

Here is a great tutorial on how to do it if you don't know: Singing Face Tutorial

If you haven't learned how to do this yet, it'll be very simple once you watch that tutorial. I would like to give a big hand to whoever programmed that functionality in xlights. It's simply awesome. Extremely powerful. Until I started playing around with the matrix singing faces, I thought for sure I was going to build some stand alone singing christmas trees. But once I started using the matrix singing faces, I changed my mind completely, way more flexible and way better results IMHO to just put it on a matrix. On a matrix you can have any singing face you want, singing jack-o-lantern, trees, elf, snowman. Way easier and cheaper than building a hundred props.

Anyway, below are some examples of the singing tree for the matrix that I made. Patterned it after one of the trees on the matrix so they would look similar.  I didn't finish with the eye movements and expressions yet. But you can get what I have in the zip file below. I also used it in the following comical interludes:

Intro, 1st interlude, 2nd interlude, Outro

I think I got those in a download from LoganDC99, but I believe I read that they were released originally from someone else at auschristmaslighting.com's forums. I wish I knew who cause I would love to give him a big thanks. They are hilarious. If anyone knows if there are more to this series please let me know. I would love to have more of them. I love the banter between the two trees.

I am planning on adding another matrix tree on the right side who is listening in on the conversation and animating what is being said. At one point I was thinking about him bending over and showing his underwear where you will see that he has stitched "Hi Mom" into his underwear. I like to add my own flavor to things lol.

Anyway, I will add those little sequences when I get them finished.

Update on 05/17/17: changed demo video and uploaded updated sequence package. Getting close to the finish line on this one. Not 100% in love with some of the roof effects I added (such as the fan blades) but it's a step closer to finished.

[Dabil]

Over the last week I spent a little time developing better singing faces for my megatree. I completely redrew both the green and red singing trees for my megatree. The old versions were drawn at a much higher resolution than my megatree (which is 16x50) which meant they had to be scaled down by Xlights in order to fit on the tree. And as I discovered this often lead to less than desirable results, especially once you started adding the moving and blinking eye images on top of the singing faces. There were often artifacts or missing details from them getting scaled out.

So I redrew the green and red face completely in a 16x50 format so that they will fit my tree perfectly. I also properly antialiased the eyes so they look smoother. This is especially telling on the red tree. I included images of the before antialias and after the antialias so you can see the difference.

When I did the eyes I did them in a 16x50 format as well so when you place them on the megatree, just put them at X-center Axis=0 and Y-center Axis =0, and they will line up perfectly with the rest of the face.

Here is a demo of the faces in action: demo

I also updated the mini-tree talking face on my 24x24 matrix so that it has full eye movement as well. I didn't however do the eyes in the same 24x24 format, so I will probably do that before I add them here to make they eyes easier to place.

[sean]

these faces do look better. Nice job!

[Gilrock]

I've provided all the eyes and mouth shapes for those trees on the xLights group.  The files were edited so that there is no color background so you can place them on any model and just use On or Colorwash effects to provide the underlying color.  Also the eye and mouth files are independent making it easier to create any combination.

[Dabil]

Thanks gil, I will check them out, not sure where I got my original copies, buy they weren't very good.

Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk

[richardd]

First I love the idea of your project and would like to know what I can do to help?

For Santa impossible mission I think a mix between the mission impossible song and the Great Escape  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbsuAbTTsV8would make for a interesting mix for that video.

Again let me know what I can do to help the project

Cheers
Richard

[Dabil]

Thanks for the response Richardd. I am not sure what kind of skills you have, or what you are interested in working on. It says by your name that you are a newbie like me. Whatever project you like and have the skill to move forward.

One thing that I have been meaning to do, but haven't gotten around to is re-timing the "Blue Christmas" sequence I had started. I did it using a mp4 I had downloaded from vimeo, and so my sequence does not match any of the Blue Christmas mp3's that you can buy. So I have been meaning to go back and re-time the sequences start to the mp3 you can get off of the Amazon store. If you would like to work on that it would be helpful.

Basically you just need to move the effects in the song back or forward to match the start of the music. I think mine starts like a half second before or after the official mp3 does.

Here is a link on the Amazon mp3 store of the version I was going to use: Link

I was also thinking about using the version with Martina McBride Here

But I think they will have to be 2 separate sequences since the songs are different lengths.

Also the sequence isn't finished, and at least one of the effects (blue swirling effect around the 54 second mark) I was going to scrap, you can watch the demo video of the sequence here: link so you can see how I have it timed. There are numerous locations in the song where I wanted effects to go off at precise moments. This was one of my earlier attempts at sequencing when I was first learning, so it's pretty basic. I was basing my work partly off of this video.

This was always my mother's favorite christmas song, so I am compelled to do a sequence for it. So yeah, do that or just pick something else you are interested in.

[Dabil]

New post, new video.... Steelers - Here We GO!
                           
I do realize that this one has a limited audience (Us Steeler fans), however I think it shows the versatility of the lights that they can be extended outside of just a Christmas setting. And since the football playoffs go through January, why not support your team?!

I got this sequence from the creator of Leechburg Lights in Pennsylvania, Clyde Lindsey when we met at Light Up Ohio. I have been busy adapting it to my set-up, which is very different from Clyde's who has a lot of dumb RBG's. This is a Leechburg lights original, so I will have to ask Clyde if he minds if I release his sequence on here, but if not, I am already doing a complete resequence of this one myself, so it will get released in some form or other. I redid about half of the images and animations on this sequence as usual, so I will include those that I did here. Like a lot of xlight sequencers, Clyde utilized the internet to find and use some of the gif animations in his sequence. You can always tell because gif's for the web are generally given a matte (Usually white) to help them blend into the web pages they are displayed on. So on those images, I removed the matte and gave it a purely transparent background. I also added some custom graphics and animations for the field goal. If anyone would like me to create similar animations for their favorite team, just ask.

Edit on 06/12/17:redid the arches and arch fans this past week. Still have some work on them to get them just the way I want them though. But very close to where I want them.

[mackdave]

How do you make the eyes blink the 16x 50 face matrix? I put them in the sequence as a picture under the model. I think i'm missing something.