So - I have a problem this year, and I think it could be solved with a pretty neat effect in XLights. I want to do lasers that shine onto the house, in addition to spot lights - and I need them to shine on specific parts of my yard. I can do this with manually by entering DMX value curves, however, that doesn't give me a great preview of whats really happening, and plus, I have to manually enter\guess values for each step which is a bit sub-optimal.
Here's a run down of the concept I have - see attachments for layout examples of what I'm thinking.
1) DMX Model would have an additional box called "Target", which would have an additional X%, Y%, Width and Height.
2) DMX Model would have 4 additional parameters called:
-> "Target Left - Pan Orientation" (what the pan value should be when pointing at left of the target box)
-> "Target Right - Pan Orientation"
-> "Target Top - Tilt Orientation" (what the tilt value should be when pointing at top of the target box)
-> "Target Bottom - Tilt Orientation"
These values would reflect your real world min\max values for your DMX moving head. So the left of your house could be a PAN value of 100, and the right side is 180. The Top of your house is a tilt of 15, the bottom of your house is a tilt of 0. (This is important for the effect to calculate position inside the target)
3) On the effect side of things, there would be a new DMX effect option called "Follow Path", which allows you to draw a multi-anchor point vector path using standard drawing shapes (line, bezier, etc...)
4) The effect would allow you to slide each anchor points point of time in the effect, so you can more finely tune the speed during the effect.
The end result, would be a PREVIEW that shows a light moving on the face of your house, following the path you laid out, with the speed evaluated by the distance between the anchors. The X,Y (tilt\pan) DMX values are calculated per frame based on the position inside the target.
Ideally you could apply color values to this as well, that allows you to change color through the effect (like other effects).
Bottom line here is the ability to MAP real world Tilt\Pan values, based on your physical house layout, and create a vector path for the light to follow - allowing more fine-grained preview-ability of your moving head target.
What do you guys think?
