single strand effects

[bobschm]

As a newbie, I'm making progress. I'm trying to work with single vertical strands of 50 pixels on the front of my house. I realize that some effects, like TEXT, make no sense on a single vertical strand. I figure FIRE should work. CURTAIN (bottom to top, for example) is another effect that I thought should work on a vertical line.

I can get a nice flickering FIRE, red bottom and black top, on as few as two vertical strands at a time. But as soon as I switch to a single vertical line of pixels, it becomes a full height shimmer of some kind.

I've tried several methods; vertical matrix, polyline, single line, custom model, submodels.

Can you give it a try and tell me how to do these effects?

[Gilrock]

It's probably just that the default render buffer for your line is not vertical its horizontal.  Doesn't matter how its drawn on the screen.  But you can switch the buffer to be arranged as you have it on the screen on a per effect basis.  Just change the Render Style to "Per Preview" in the Layer Settings panel.

[bobschm]

Talking about just the fire effect, this would make sense only if the vertical buffer rotated to horizontal as soon as you switched from two vertical lines to a single vertical line. But two vertical lines look as expected with a vertical buffer, fire at the bottom and black at the top. If the buffer was always horizontal, then two lines on the right side of the matrix should be black, and two lines on the left should be sparkling red/ orange along their full length.

Is there a resource you can point me to to explain how the buffer works?

[Gilrock]

Sorry but you're gonna need to explain what exactly is involved in switching from two vertical lines to one.  I have no idea if you are using groups or what's happening with the models to accomplish that verbage.

[QldKing]

Is the start location for both strands at the same spot? Bottom or top?


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[bobschm]

Create a matrix made up of vertical strings. Please tell me how to correctly display, for example, the fire effect on just the left vertical line of that matrix.

I new at this, so I suspect I'm doing it wrong, but I can only get it to look correct if I use two vertical lines.  This is true of many effects. Meteors will drop as expected on two adjacent lines. Switch down to a single line and I get some kind of rainbow twinkle.

[Gilrock]

Ok so you are using just part of a matrix for the lines.  I'm still unclear how you are accomplishing that.  Are you creating a submodel with one column and another submodel with 2 columns?  Are you using the buffer window to restrict the effect to 2 strings or 1.  Both of those methods are possible answers for how to accomplish what you're doing.  And you need to tell us what render styles you've tried also.  Now you see with so many variations and possibilities there's no way for us to know what you are getting wrong.  We need to see some actual files or a video or share a sequence.  Something to clue us in.

[bobschm]

I started with a matrix of just two vertical lines, but when I got this result, I switched to a custom model and got the same result. Here's the simplest way to duplicate what I'm seeing. Build a custom model consisting of just two vertical lines 50 pixels in each line. It starts at the lower left, runs vertically (pixels 1-50) then continues from the upper right to the lower right (pixels 51-100). Make two sub-models, pixels vert1: 1-50 and vert2: pixels 51-100. Now put the fire effect on just vert1, and all I see is a full length shimmering red/orange line.

Keep in mind, I'm a complete Noob.

[Gilrock]

Yeah all you had to do was click the "Vertical Buffer Layout" button in the sub model definition.  A submodel is always horizontal so you check that box and make it vertical.  If you read my first reply in the thread I told you the problem was the default buffer was horizontal but I wasn't near xLights to know the exact step to change the buffer.

[bobschm]

Sometimes it's right in front of your face.    I thought I tried that but apparently not. It works. So $100 donation sent. Thank you.