Effects Within The 3d Environment

[KenKol]

My question revolves around the new 3d enhancements available in Xlights. A brief summary of my setup (and picture attached).

I live on a corner lot so My previous layout was the house images "stitched" together to flatten out all four sides of the house. Reason for that is I utilize my right side yard (facing the house) for depth of props so visitors can view from all sides and still get a show. The issue with that always was the whole house efects were "off" being as there was really no depth perception to the props. My Mega Tree was situated back by the pond near the sidewalk and the patio walls had a matrix net on them. Viewed from the rear of the house, the bleed through of effects would look off when the patio wall is doind a bars effect and the tree is doing the same effect (whole house, All Pixels). In a nutshell, they wouldn't match. The hope of the 3d is that they would be better matched with the depth of the yard realized.

What I am seeing is this (hopefully I can relay what I am seeing correctly) when I have a whole house effect (take the greatest show where the red spotlights pan across everything at the beginning) when I situate my props on the side of the house, the effect still focuses on the front of the house and the sides seem to just "light up red" when the pan comes in contact with them. The front view looks great and the spotlights appear to pan correctly, but there is no 3d effect settings in the models. The top to bottom effects work great, but anything that is across the house just looks good from the front and the props on the side do not see the effects but rather light up.

an option to adjust the effects within the xyz plane would probably help this. Is this something coming in the long run?

[Gilrock]

The effects are all still 2D sorry.  You can change the viewing angle for each effect but whatever camera angle you pick it's still a 2D rendering.  We haven't changed anything with the effects we still feed them a 2D render buffer.

[KenKol]

Thanks for the reply Gil. Is that something coming in the future?

[Gilrock]

Well I don't know what you expect the Bars effect to do.  How are we supposed to know that you want it to bend around your house?  The Bars effect is rendering in 3D space so if you have a string that falls along the render plane of a bar then its going to light up all at once.  You can render from a different angle if you want. 

[KenKol]

Gil
Not so much the bars effect, but rather having the pinwheel effect lay flat over the top of the model (roof of the house) and maybe transition flat to the front and around the corner to the left around the house as in how the effect can sawtooth the positioning in the 2d world where the pinwheel center bounces around and covers the entire model "faces". In 3d, I cannot place it on the side of the house and have the effect face the street. I would like to be able to even have the three main sides of my house seperate as a group onto themselves and place the same effect on each while having the effect face the proper direction. Front and back of the house would be OK, but the side of the house, the effect would face the front of the house rather then the street. On a prop that is flat like the window rings and 2d tree, the effect wouldn't "sweep" across the width of the prop.

I understand the obstacles and challanges of doing something of this caliber and, don't get me wrong, I LOVE every aspect of the software, just trying to help realize more tools to help in bringing our visuals to life.

Basically, I'm trying to see how the effects look at 90 degrees around a corner. People view from the front of the house the back of the house and the street side of the house. I guess I will place all my props around and see what it looks like in real life before I tear down next week. I'll report back with what I see. In the preview, the side view across my window frames, mega tree and 2d tree seem to not pan though. (See the attached pics). I have not placed all my props, just the side ones for now to see.

I hope the directional aspect I am trying to accomplish is bring conveyed here.

[Gilrock]

Well you're gonna have to learn how to create the groups in a way that allows you to sequence it the way you imagine.  I get your idea but its not easy to get a computer to read your mind on how you want the effects to wrap around your house and the code automatically do what every user wants.

[KenKol]

Not looking for a computer to read my mind, but a slider in the effects settings for "Z" in addition to "X" and "Y" sliders that are there already.

If this program could read my mind as to what I want though.....enhancements!! It would be extremely cool to be able to put the 3d preview into my Occulus VR setup and stand inthe middle of he lights as well, but not practical.

[KenKol]

In all reality, the ability to zoom is enough for me to be able to place the props across such a wide area and place the effects for what I am looking for while keeping everything in a 2d world. The 3d is cool for placement of props. I might go with the 2d flat layout of my house, but add the depth of props across the lawn. I think that would be enough for what I am looking for.

[Gilrock]

A Z slider makes no sense at all.  The effects are all 2D.  A bars effect along the Z axis still looks exactly the same.  I'm these ideas sound good when you think of them but in reality it's not practical.  And I'm not listening to any enhancement requests right now.  The show season just ended and I'm relaxing.  If you're not happy with what we've provided there are other options.

[KenKol]

Gil, WOW, First off, I'm sorry if I came off demanding or asking for anything unreasonable, that is not what I wanted at all. You and the whole Xlights community have been fantastic with all you have done to get the software to this point and believe me, i'm very grateful for that. I'm just trying to wrap my head around this new 3d layout and how I can use it. During this interaction in this post, I can see that it is not for me and I am leaving it at that. Honestly, I have no idea what goes into the software end of things but I can imagine it is WAY above my paygrade as the saying goes.

Not asking for anything, not wanting to voice enhancements (if you read that, I was joking about the software reading my mind as an enhancement, so, yeah theres that)

I never said I wasn't happy and, as I said earlier, I'm sorry if it came across like that, just trying to understand how I can use the new features.