effects!!

Hi everybody
I think it might be worth if we could spread, let’s say, the size of an effect between two different values. 100 trhu 200. Crystal clear it is I’m not talking about spreading the size among fixtures that’s something we can already do.
I’m talking about the possibility to have the size of an effect varying between two size end values. Same thing for rate and length.
We should be able to give our effect a time the size value takes to go through all the values in between. Let put it this way. I have en effect running and its size varies from 100 thru 200 in 30 sec. and all the way back if we choose bounce or snapping back to 100 if we choose Up direction.
It might be also interesting if we could change the direction of an effect quickly.
Let’s say I have an evenly fanned rainbow running from right to left in my selection. Push a button and change the direction (left to right) in a fingers snap.
To achieve this a play controls bar such as the one we have in the cuelist may be added.
Might be placed in the effect editor.
As we open whatever effect editor we could access control bar and reverse the direction.
Cheers
Marco:hogsign:
  • I like the idea of the play controls bar.............
    We could have:
    -Forward
    -Reverse
    -Bounce
    -Random

    I do know that this is all to do with fixture selection order, and don;t really know the best way this could be implemented.
    But it's a nice idea, and I see how it could be very usefull.

    Kris.
  • Hey, i think Akito will really med when he hear that Marco steal his Idea ! :poke:
  • Marco,

    It sounds like what you're asking for is the ability to apply an effect waveform to the rate or size of an existing effect. I can see how this could be very powerful, but it also adds another layer of complexity to what's arguably the most complex feature in the console. Are you aware of any lighting controllers that are currently capable of this? I'd be curious to see how it had been implemented before.

    You also mentioned wanting the ability to change the "direction" of an effect. The problem with this is that effects currently don't have any concept of direction. By adjusting effects offsets for individual fixtures, you can make an effect appear to run in a specific pattern, but the console doesn't have an awareness of how the effect looks on-stage. To get what you're asking for, we'd first have to implement a way to control the direction of effects. I would imagine that this would just associate an effect with a specific fixture selection order and apply fanned offsets to fixtures based on that order.

    I hope this helps.
  • Hi Tom.
    1st) I see what you say. I did understand in the first place that my idea was kind of being able to apply an effect to an effect. I'm not quite sure if this solution has been implemented by someone but I think back in germany (you know what i mean) they've got something that looks like that. I say looks like that because of the way the effect looks like when executed.
    Being able to apply a waveform to size, rate and lenght would be extremely powerful but I reckon implementing kind of internal fade time to transit from size A to Size B would be good as well. It would be like telling the console it has to crossfade from Size A to Size B in X time linearly. Dunno if it makes sense. Honestly this idea came into my mind as I was playing with the german offline connected to wysiwyg. I will play a little bit further to figure out if it is the way it looks!!!!!


    2nd) I know whatever effect doesn't have a concept of direction but we do have one. What the console understands is the way the group has been built and the way offset has been fanned.
    let's try to clear things up.
    Ok I've got 10 fixtures hung from SL to SR
    1 thru 10 full enter.
    give magenta and yellow a sine
    adjust rate and size as wished.
    lenght set to 20%
    offset set to 0 thru 324.
    Now what I get on stage is a red chase running from fixture 10 thru 1
    If i set the offset all the way around 324 thru 0 I get right the same effect ( fixtures going to red and back to white one at the time) but reversed: Chase running from fixture 1 thru 10.
    From a programming point of view what I did was let's say turning the offset back to front, but visually I did change direction of the effect. Correct me if I'm wrong.
    So why not having the option to reverse or turning the offset back to front with just one button or in other words changing the direction of the effect? It would be like telling the console to recalculate the offset values back to front.
    Thanks a lot
    Marco:hogsign:
  • Last weekend I played a bit with effects and noticed the same thing as Marco. So it shouldn't be difficult to have that reverse.
    Also a quick button for Abs(function) which is the same as effect lenght 200% and rate x 2.
    I'm just wondering how to make the effect which gives only negative values, cause you cannot adjust the lenght from the start of the curve.
  • Sami would you please explain little bit further what you exactly mean by negative values? For honestly I've got some problems to fully understand your idea?
    I do understand my idea of being able to reverse whatever effect with one button but apparently noone has liked the idea :17:
    Marco:hogsign:
  • Well if you do an effect with size of 100 and the function is sine it gives values from 50 to -50 around the basevalue.
    When you make the fx lenght to 200% only positive values are given. Though it of course works only on functions which have the same kind of positive and negative side, like sine and sawtooth and spiral.
    But there's no way to make those functions work the way only negative side is used. Though I might be wrong...gotta do some tests...

    I do understand your reverse idea and I agree there should be a shortcut for that and making that shouldn't be hard, cause it's just reversing the offset like you said.
  • Sami,

    I haven't tried this yet, but I think it will work. When you set your length to 200%, only half of the effect has time to run before it restarts. With your offset at 0, this will be the positive half of the effect cycle. I would think if you set your offset to 180 that you would get only the negative portion of the effect.

    I hope this helps.
  • Try it, cause I think I'm right. You cannot get negative portion that way.
  • One thing about effects also came to my mind, which could fit in the abstraction layer idea. It would be nice to see effect size as number of slots when run into wheels. Also Hog could calculate the size for different fixtures. So, if you set the size 3 slots, every fixture type would use that size.
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