Advice needed please for putting jpegs onto 360 degree megatrees

[danj]

I am planning to put some pictures (jpegs) on my 360 megatrees this year and they are not looking like I expected them to look.   I have tried several different horizontal and vertical pixel combinations but I am not getting what I want so far.  One megatree will consist of twenty 3 meter strips (30 LEDs/m) and the other will consist of twenty 4 meter strips (30 LEDs/m); both configured as 360 degree trees.   If I change the models from 360 degree trees to 180 trees, the pictures I am trying look much better.  I plan to keep the pictures static on the front of each tree, so I am setting the horizontal pixels to 10 or less and I have tried several vertical sizes but none are looking quite right.  I posted the star jpeg I am trying to display and one of the examples of what it looks like as smaller number of pixels.  I do have white meteors shooting up through the picture, so you do see meteors at the bottom !   Thanks in advance.

[sean]

your original picture is 161x195 you want to display it on 10x120 megatree

this is why i suggest using 180 degree trees with any given number of lights. this allows more horizontal resolution

go into paint and resize your original picture down to 10x120, not much is left of orig picture.

fold your lights, make 180 degree tree. try to get 20-30 strands, your pictures will start to look betetr. by the way, resizing your picture to 10 pixels wide means it would fit inside this "o".

so , for pictures get as much horiz resolution as you can.

Make many models
10, 20, 30,40 .etc.
try your picture on each model. make a spreadsheet that shows the increases in price as you go up.

pick the sweet spt for your budget and display.

figure around $0.50 per light.
10x120 = 1200 * $0.50 = $600 tree

do it with 2811 flex stri[ps
10x120 = 1200 * $0.25 = $300

Lets use the $20/5m ws2811 flex strips.
with your original picture
161*195 = 31.395 nodes. 31395*0.25 = $7848

we normally cannot get megatrees to have anything ear our original picture resolution.

a 32x50 tree does a nice job on most pioctures
64x120 would be awesome. who has the money?

[plaberge]

It's a resolution, pixel spacing, and perspective issue with megatrees. I display images (typically animated GIFs) on mine with mixed results. My tree is a 24x120 180 tree and depending on the image size I can get a pretty good rendering of simple objects assuming that I keep the resolution to no more than 1/2 the height and 2/3's the width of the number of pixels (in my case 60x18 pixels) and keep it centered on the tree. Simple images with smooth edges, like balls, seem to render best. The problem with images like stars is that the pointy bits rarely seem to line up properly if you are downsizing an image using standard photo manipulation software.

Something else that I learned is that the images always look better on the previewer than the actual tree because an 180 degree tree is rendered as a flat object in Xlights and you can see all of the pixels. In reality, it is a 3D object, so when you look at the physical tree, you don't see the pixels that are on the edges, hence why you want to keep your images smaller. You are making that even worse when you try to display an image on a 360 tree.

Paul.

[danj]

Thanks for your responses.   I wasn't clear in my posting question..   I tried many many different horizontal/vertical resizing combinations; I just wanted to show the original jpeg I am resizing, in case there was something about that image that wouldn't work on a megatree.  As plaberge noted, the sharp edges pf the star don't come out all that great.   I have the megatree sizes I want to do this year (I agree with Sean--"who has the money"!!); I will change as suggested and go from a 360 megatree to a 180 megatree.   I actually tried a bunch of resized jpegs that I thought might fit nicely on the "front" part of the megatree but I guess since the number of horizontal pixels (e.g 8-10) is not that much it is really impacting the resolution.

[Gilrock]

This is exactly one of the things I liked about xLights.  I was planning on copying Matt Johnson's 34x32 matrix but I modeled it up in xLights and played a video on it and I wasn't happy.  So I've increased my plan to 85x64.

[JonB256]

I put low res pictures on my 40x30 but never bothered with video. I did use an Animated GIF of a Grandma during "Grandma got run over..."

[danj]

I changed my models to 180 degree megatrees and the jpegs are showing up really nicely now.  Thanks very much for the help!!

[arw01]

I think the 64 vertical and 80 or so wide will look good.  While watching a basketball game the other day they had a shot in 1080p that let me count the nodes vertically on the scorers table while lit up with a full motion car add video.  It was 64 high and who knows how wide, but that became my new goal in the next couple of years to get 64 up.

It might take me 2 years as I don't want to invest in THAT many P10 panels yet, but probably get to half of that this year and the other half next year.

For my "mega tree" i had planned on about 190 degrees, but it ended up being about 335 degrees, so I am doubling up this year on RGB nodes if it's in the budget, otherwise I may just move the back 8 strings to the "front" and have all the effects just not render on the other direction at all.

[Greg.Ca]

A person cannot be 'around' the Mega tree. to see what's going on on the other half.  Even if we had eyes behind our head we still coulden't see the other half of the mega tree. Face all strands of the Mega tree toward the street and set it up as a 180 degree tree. It's that simple. --Greg--

[CaptainMurdoch]

If you want images on the tree I agree on facing the most pixels forward, but if you don't do images then a 360 can look better.  It depends on the spacing of your tree.  I have a 16-strand 360 tree with technicolors pixels with C9 covers so there is a lot of room to see through the tree and see the pixels with c9 covers on the back side so you do see the full 360 tree from any side.  It also looks good from in the house, in front of the house, down the street, from any angle.

[danj]

Thanks for your inputs!!   I will stick with 180; you can only really see from the front of my yard, so the 360 tree is not really "required"...