xLights Help - Layout/Effects

[davdue]

I have been using Vixen for 14 years and a lot of what I see out on YouTube is using xLights doing things that I don't think I can do with it anymore.  So I am going to try to switch over.  I am going to add a 10-11' Mega tree in front of my door this year.  I have been watching videos and reading the manual so I can learn how to create the layout and sequence for some models I have in my show today.  Attached is a recording of the Vixen preview screen showing the layous and some effects I currently do with my pixels.  Most of my display is AC lights controlled by WiFi renard SSR's.  My pixels are all controlled by ESPixelPop's.  All of this is ran on FPP on a raspberry Pi.  I have 800 pixels that go across my yard left to right they are on 2 ESPixelPop's.  How do I do the effects I have shown in the video.  The 180 degree tree of the basketball goal pole is 12 strings of dumb RGB pixels controlled by a Renard Plus 48LSD.  Thanks in advance for your help.

P.S.
I have these pixels setup in the layout tab as 1 string of pixels of 400 pixels (Yard Lts 1-4) with individual segments of 50, 50, 50, 50, 50, 50, 50, 50 and then another as Yard Lts 5-8.

[Gilrock]

That's a problem many get hung up on is trying to do something exactly the same as what they did in some other program.  I say just draw a layout and play around and learn what the xLights effects can do.  Most of the Vixen effects will have equivalents.  Its easier if you ask something more specific like hey I use SuperEffectA in Vixen whats the equivalent in xLights.  There's usually several ways to accomplish something.  Sometimes you can't do something with a single effect but you can with 2 effects and people will get hung up wanting to do with one effect because that's how they did it in another program.

[davdue]

That's a problem many get hung up on is trying to do something exactly the same as what they did in some other program.  I say just draw a layout and play around and learn what the xLights effects can do.  Most of the Vixen effects will have equivalents.  Its easier if you ask something more specific like hey I use SuperEffectA in Vixen whats the equivalent in xLights.  There's usually several ways to accomplish something.  Sometimes you can't do something with a single effect but you can with 2 effects and people will get hung up wanting to do with one effect because that's how they did it in another program.

In Vixen I used the Wipe effect for the first exampe.  Pulse for the second example.  I had those setup as 8 independent strings of 100 px.  So I pulsed the first 4 strings then the next 4 strings.  Same for the 3rd example except pulsed strings 1, 2, 3, etc.

I have been messing around more with effects and I think curtain works for the wipe effect but I'm not sure about the pulse since I don't have 8 separate strings.

[Gilrock]

For me its easier if I can see the effect on a large matrix so I can really tell how it works.  If there is an effect in Vixen that's cool that we don't have I could code it up.  I'm thinking a Morph effect could also do something similar to a Wipe.  Not sure anything would be similar to Pulse but you could probably do it with 2 effects that start at the center with each one going a different direction.

[davdue]

For me its easier if I can see the effect on a large matrix so I can really tell how it works.  If there is an effect in Vixen that's cool that we don't have I could code it up.  I'm thinking a Morph effect could also do something similar to a Wipe.  Not sure anything would be similar to Pulse but you could probably do it with 2 effects that start at the center with each one going a different direction.

I will try to set up a matrix sometime and reply here with it using the wipe effect.  As far as the pulse effect it is like the ON effect.  THe only difference is that instead of having an on intensity and off intensity you can set an intensity curve with as many point as you want with varying percentages.  I think the main issue I am having with xLights here is how to do the layout correctly so a single string of pixels can use the effects in the correct way if I want to see it move left to right or top to bottom like the video showed.  Just different ways to accomplish things.  I tried the single strand effect and got a left to right movement of the pixels similar to what I had as well.  The only issue there was you have each vertical string of pixels also chasing a little bit rather than the whole string turning on and moving left to right.  Like I said maybe I need to change the layout.  I am not really looking for new coding unless you see something that you think would make the program better.

[Gilrock]

Yeah a lot of that depends on whether you have the strings in a group and the type of render buffer you are using.  You can take the same group of models and make effects change quite a bit by changing render buffers.  There are stacked horizontal and stacked vertical to try to sharpen up columns or rows of strings that might not be perfectly straight when used in a group with a Per Preview render buffer.

Try putting a Morph effect on the group and choose "Full Sweep Right" in the Quickset field.