Moving Head 3D beams

[Santacarl]

Hi All,

Not sure if this is the right place to post this but I thought I'd try it...

I'm trying to play with Moving Head 3D beams to see if I might want to consider using them.

I am struggling trying to figure out how it works.  I placed the model on the layout but have no clue what the settings should be or how to set that up.

Has anyone done a video to walk people through using this feature?  I'm at a loss on what I'm trying to do....

[Gilrock]

Did you checkout the videos on xLights.org?  I know I did a mini presentation that was recorded years ago

[Santacarl]

Thanks Gil....Hadn't been over to that site in a while and I forgot to check....

[jnealand]

For a guy who often posts that he does not hold his mouth just right when working on stuff I'm surprised you would want to get into something very expensive and potentially very complicated.  LOL

[Santacarl]

For a guy who often posts that he does not hold his mouth just right when working on stuff I'm surprised you would want to get into something very expensive and potentially very complicated.  LOL

Well...I might be dumb as a bag of rocks but I DO try to learn new stuff....it just takes me a bit longer to get there on some of the more techie aspects of the hobby but I'm relentless and never give up!   When I work on things I usually end up breaking something in order to figure out what NOT to do.....before I 'fix' it. 

[jnealand]

Us old guys never give up, maybe we just have to much time on our hands or maybe not since I never seem to have enough time.  Keep going Carl, I'll be watching for your success video.

[Reddy_Kilowatt]

I'm in the same boat. I bought a DMX head to try out and I'm having issues with the basic setup. I have some older "RPM" DMX controllers, one is an Enttec open USB clone, the other is a multicast ethernet 4 port bridge. They configure properly (chan. 1 to 510) but when I add a head model, it want's to start at 511 and says it can't be mapped.

-Craig

[Gilrock]

Unfortunately since the setup tab was upgraded to the controllers tab things are a little more complex to the point I can no longer just tell people how to set things up.  I have to sit there playing with it myself to get something working.  I also noticed the program seems to be reserving the first 510 channels but I was able to override it by forcing a model to channel 1.  A lot of this changes based on whether you are selecting a controller that supports the auto layout and have some of those boxes checked.

[Santacarl]

Us old guys never give up, maybe we just have to much time on our hands or maybe not since I never seem to have enough time.  Keep going Carl, I'll be watching for your success video.

Yeah buddy...guilty as charged.

Thanks to the reminder to check on the xLight.org site I found a couple of videos by Tom Betgeorge to get me started.  Then I did a search and found his site and bought one of his sequences that uses the 3D heads.  From there I reverse engineered his setup and adapted it to mine.  It took me a few days of tinkering and I got hung up on one thing I overlooked in the setup but after pulling my hair out for a day or so I found it and just successfully imported his sequence into my layout and it works.

I wanted to see if I could get it into Xlights configured correctly before I got serious about considering actually adding them to the display.  I've got to say that one of my biggest concerns now is how tedious it is to sequence these things once you get them set up.  You literally have to think in 3 dimensions and sequence that way.  It reminds me of the really old days when I had to learn Assembly language to program an early computer.  It was painful....  I'm not sure I want to experience that type of pain again...as sequencing these things seems, so far, much more time consuming...

Another consideration is where to place these in the display.  I'm too old to be crawling around on a steep roof so they'd have to go in the yard....I was originally thinking these need to be above or behind the display and I'm not sure how they'd look placed in the middle of the display at ground level...  I think lots of head scratching is about to ensue before I make a final decision....

[Santacarl]

Unfortunately since the setup tab was upgraded to the controllers tab things are a little more complex to the point I can no longer just tell people how to set things up.  I have to sit there playing with it myself to get something working.  I also noticed the program seems to be reserving the first 510 channels but I was able to override it by forcing a model to channel 1.  A lot of this changes based on whether you are selecting a controller that supports the auto layout and have some of those boxes checked.

Gil...if I'm following you I think my work around for this was to limit the size of the universe controlling the heads to the actual number of channels assigned to the heads.  I haven't purchased any of the props yet so I don't know if that works in the hardware or not...but seems to work fine in XL...

[Gilrock]

No I'm just saying I experienced something similar the other day I added a few models and there were no models assigned to the 1 to 510 channel range my first model started at 511 and I'm not up to speed on why that is happening which causes me to get frustrated not knowing how the program works and it seemed harder than the old days.

[Santacarl]

No I'm just saying I experienced something similar the other day I added a few models and there were no models assigned to the 1 to 510 channel range my first model started at 511 and I'm not up to speed on why that is happening which causes me to get frustrated not knowing how the program works and it seemed harder than the old days.

I fully understand your frustration about not knowing how the program works.... I can't count the times that I've posted a similar comment.  I mostly get frustrated with myself for not being tech savvy enough to understand.

I thought I had these moving heads figured out and while I did figure out how to control them collectively I ran into another head scratcher when trying to control them individually under 1 effect....so I'm frustrated yet again.....I suspect it has something to do with beat tracks or note onset but I can't figure it out....YET.   

[Santacarl]

I thought I had these moving heads figured out and while I did figure out how to control them collectively I ran into another head scratcher when trying to control them individually under 1 effect....so I'm frustrated yet again.....I suspect it has something to do with beat tracks or note onset but I can't figure it out....YET.   

Well...figured it out...you have to dive down to the individual node level.....

[Reddy_Kilowatt]

No I'm just saying I experienced something similar the other day I added a few models and there were no models assigned to the 1 to 510 channel range my first model started at 511 and I'm not up to speed on why that is happening which causes me to get frustrated not knowing how the program works and it seemed harder than the old days.

Yea, something's definitely broken. I arbitrarily jumped back to 2020.1 and everything came out fine. Guess I shouldn't be using these vintage controllers.

[Gilrock]

Well...figured it out...you have to dive down to the individual node level.....

No you shouldn't need to do that.  What effect are you trying to drop on the model?  You gotta have at least the color channels mapped on the model.