Author Topic: Auto generate random effects from your Saved Effect Presets - How to  (Read 8861 times)

Offline flyinverted

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Here is how you can auto-generate effects from your saved presets. 

You will need Notepad++ and a Google account to use Google Spreadsheets.  If you have Excel, that's even better.

1. Open Notepad++ and navigate to your xlights folder, open your xlights_rgbeffects.xml file
2. Highlight and copy only the lines that start with <effect name =
3. Paste that into a new text file, save as effects.txt
4. Start Excel open the, txt file you just saved. Select delimited and " as the delimiter.
5. The effects will be in column D  and should start with the effect name as you see it in xlights.

Note the <effect name="Fireball" settings=" prefix should be gone. You can also manually remove this from
each line in the text editor if you do not have Excel.

6. Highlight all the effects in column D and copy.

7. Start a Google Docs spreadsheet and paste the effects into column B
8. Paste the following in to A1

=index($B$1:$B$30,randbetween(1,30))

9. Change the $B$30 to match the last row that has an effect. If you have 15 effects then change $B$30 to $B$15

10 Copy that formula to every cell you'd like a random effect in Column A and press enter.
Column A should now have a randomly selected cell from your Column B

11. Copy column A
12. Paste into your Nutcracker editor Window for the model  of your choice.

To regenerate random effects in the Google Docs spreadsheet, just type a single character in any empty cell and press enter.


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« Last Edit: October 25, 2014, 08:36:30 PM by flyinverted »
Steve Giron
Maricopa County, AZ
xLights user with a boat-load of channels.

Do not ask to know all the answers, but ask to understand the question.

Offline sean

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Re: Auto generate random effects from your Saved Effect Presets - How to
« Reply #1 on: October 25, 2014, 08:38:30 PM »
cool!
Sean
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Offline flyinverted

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Re: Auto generate random effects from your Saved Effect Presets - How to
« Reply #2 on: October 25, 2014, 08:46:04 PM »
Necessity is the mother of invention.

Steve Giron
Maricopa County, AZ
xLights user with a boat-load of channels.

Do not ask to know all the answers, but ask to understand the question.

Offline budude

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Re: Auto generate random effects from your Saved Effect Presets - How to
« Reply #3 on: October 25, 2014, 09:52:19 PM »
Just what I was looking for - thanks!

One suggestion I have is to create a group of effects to fit your particular model (or model type anyway) since some work better on different models. That way when you cut/paste the effect list, you only grab the ones you need for that model.

Offline vipersinu2

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Re: Auto generate random effects from your Saved Effect Presets - How to
« Reply #4 on: December 02, 2016, 10:50:06 AM »
I am tring to auto generate arches. would this work if I wanted to save straight line effect only just for arches?