I Want To Use The Faces Effect To Control a DMX Laser

[TastyHamSandwich]

So, as the title suggests, I'm wanting to use the faces effect to manipulate a DMX Laser. I'm trying figure out how to define a model that can be set up for various Face definitions and assign a different DMX Value to each different phoneme for a given channel. Is there a way this can be accomplished given the current feature set? Or might I have to look into an enhancement request? I've poked around with what I know about the Faces effect and model definitions, but I'm at a bit of a loss right now.

Maybe one of you guys, who are infinitely more capable than myself, might know something 

[Ebuechner]

I haven't used it myself but isn't that what the states affect is for.
Can't say much more than that because I'm not in front of my computer with X lights right at the moment.

[Gilrock]

http://videos.xlights.org/dmx-model-stateeffect_65a050d18.html

[TastyHamSandwich]

I'd considered the State effect for this, but unless my mind isn't appreciating some quality of the capabilities of the States properly, I thought it would fall short for this application, as basically I am wanting to assign different DMX values for different phonemes, running off a lyric track that I've created.

Like, for the word "story", let's say it's the phonemes "O", "rest", "E", "rest". I want it to read from the phonemes and apply DMX Value, idk, "100" for the O phoneme, then "25" for the rest, then "192" for E, a back to 25 for the 2nd rest. I obviously just made all those up, but that's basically what I'm trying to accomplish.

Is it possible for me to create states named after each phoneme, and that the States effect will follow that bottom-level portion of the lyric track, using a state I named "rest", and apply the corresponding DMX value? I guess that's the functionality I would need. I tried to set this up, and encountered two different stumbling blocks:

One, is that the names for states don't seem to allow capital letters (sometimes it let me get away with typing *one* capital, but never a second, which I would need to define the proper state for "AI" and "FV" and other such phonemes, as I know if I custom-type a phoneme such as "ai", it isn't recognized by the Faces effect and doesn't set up the channels for that phoneme on my existing faces properly.

The second stumbling block is that the States effect does not recognize/allow for use, any of the timing tracks that have been broken down for use with the Faces effect, with the little parrot/papagayo symbol. It only shows the other timing tracks I have, and disregards the broken-down tracks used for the Faces.

[keithsw1111]

Define faces using the single node and set a colour. Use the same node for each phoneme but set the colour to a different shade of grey where the colour value is the rg and b set to the desired dmx value. That should work.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[TastyHamSandwich]

That looks like it'll work exactly as needed. Thanks Keith! I was close, I just didn't think about the "Force Custom Colors" option, and doing it like that.

Much appreciated for everyone's feedback!

[Gilrock]

The second stumbling block is that the States effect does not recognize/allow for use, any of the timing tracks that have been broken down for use with the Faces effect, with the little parrot/papagayo symbol. It only shows the other timing tracks I have, and disregards the broken-down tracks used for the Faces.

Once you break down to phoneme's you can just copy the 3rd line to its own timing track so that wouldn't have been a roadblock.  But you can probably get it going with the Faces effect.

[TastyHamSandwich]

The second stumbling block is that the States effect does not recognize/allow for use, any of the timing tracks that have been broken down for use with the Faces effect, with the little parrot/papagayo symbol. It only shows the other timing tracks I have, and disregards the broken-down tracks used for the Faces.

Once you break down to phoneme's you can just copy the 3rd line to its own timing track so that wouldn't have been a roadblock.  But you can probably get it going with the Faces effect.

Yep, I suppose one could do it that way. My only concern with that is that the state names don't seem to allow capital letters, which are required for several phonemes to be understood properly. So in addition to copy/pasting it to a new timing track, I'd have to go through and modify every instance of a capitalized phoneme, which would be a minor headache, I'd think.

The video you linked me, though, was all I needed to get my brainbox turning. It just took Keith connecting the dots for me, as I didn't think about how using the Force Custom Colors within the Faces definitions could accomplish what I was after. The video mentioned that very functionality, I just didn't think to transpose it from States to Faces. Really, though, thanks for your help Gil. You're always extremely helpful, I appreciate it.