Coro singing face with xLights

djgra79

My name is Graham & I love flashing lights!
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Hi All.


I'm building some coro singing faces which are inspired by Fing's version (info here: https://auschristmaslighting.com/forums/index.php/topic,8561.0.html)
As you may know, these work by changing the colours of the mouth pieces, rather than the traditional method for wire/outline faces which simply turn the mouth channels on or off.
Since Fing's version created last year, xLights has gone through some large changes to effects etc. It now has sub-models. Previously Fing had to create multiple modles for the eyes, mouth, antlers etc and sequence each section separately. Now with sub-models, you simply create the main model for the element with ALL pixels, then the sub-models are the eyes, nose, body etc.
Whilst I have successfully got this setup (thanks Keith!) and have changed the colours of the eyes, nose, body, by dropping the mouth faces effect on top, it does not work, as the body & mouth need to be the same colour when the mouth is not open/singing.


This is what the model looks like with the body/mouth set to brown and the faces effect over the whole model. As you can see, the mouth is constantly brown and not animated at all.
rudolph body.jpg


Here, if I remove the brown colour from the body/mouth sub model, the faces effect works, but they are either on or off.
rudolph mouth.jpg


One suggestion was to duplicate the whole model to the same channels and sequence the mouth on one and the rest on the other. This had no success in work.


Any assistance from xLights gurus or the like would be greatly appreciated.
 

logandc99

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Haven't used sub models for sequencing my Coro faces so not entirely sure how it would work using that method. I can see reduplicating the whole face model and sequencing the mouth in one and the rest of the face in the other mightn't work as which ever version of the model was second would overwrite the first. What about just having a separate model for the mouth so you sequence the head in one model and the mouth in the other. And I think you would just make sure the mouth model comes after the head model to make sure the sequenced mouth effects overwrite the nil mouth effects in the head model. In the mouth model, have a second layer which is set to the colour that matches the head colour so that when the mouth shape isn't being used to make a word shape, it just looks the same as the rest of the head. But as I said, I haven't done this with sub models - just suggesting a possible work around


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djgra79

My name is Graham & I love flashing lights!
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Thanks for the feedback. I got some more assistance in chat yesterday but for those interested, i added a 2nd layer to the main model and made this brown. That makes the entire model brown. With the faces effect on the top, the desired effect was created (mouth brown when closed and white when open)
Then on the sub models i used colors for different parts of body (eyes nose etc)
I think it all comes down to the order in when it renders. Shout out again to Keith for helping troubleshoot
 
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