2018 xLights Around The Word - The Greatest Show

[LawrenceDriveLights]

Hi all I thought I might start a thread regarding the sequence for 2018 xLights Around The World - The Greatest Show.

Here is a video they have make showing the sequence mapped to different type layouts.

View: http://videos.xlights.org/part-4-2018-xlights-around-the-world-samples-of-displays_580f366ec.html


I started reading a couple of comments about this shared sequence on the xLights Facebook page, but I thought a Forum thread may also be handy.

If this is in the wrong area, or if there is a official forum thread on this please remove, delete, or post link to the official thread.

Now I am a absolute beginner / new user regarding xLights so I thought as a new user I may be able to pass on a couple of things I found when I was mapping this shared sequence to my layout.

Also it may be a good place in anybody has and tips or tricks on how they went about mapping some of the shared sequence effects on to their elements.

There is a couple of great videos on the xlights.org website on how to map this sequence.

I would recommend watching all the videos prior to mapping this sequence to your layout as they contain some important information.

In summary;
Sequence available from the google shared drive;
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1qRlqbUigsHTFOV3Ap8_2aFLWBk9J3QlC

Editing the audio file (the creators of the sequence have modified the original song and the below video gives a great demonstration on how to edit the music).
Note: I found this a nice easy process.

View: http://videos.xlights.org/2018-xlights-around-the-world-editing-your-audio-file_f8108d461.html


Next is a video on how to map the shared sequence to your layout (including some important info about grouping your models in your layout).

View: http://videos.xlights.org/part-2-2018-xlights-around-the-world-mapping-xlights_68e2e1939.html


Then another video giving a description of the matrix and singing faces set up's if you choose to add these (I found you don't need a heap of matrix type elements to still get a nice sequenced display)

View: http://videos.xlights.org/part-3-2018-xlights-around-the-world-working-with-matrices-and-singing-faces_d37057dbd.html


There also a fourth video which demonstrates how the sequence looks on different types of layouts to give you a idea how it may look on your layout.

View: http://videos.xlights.org/part-4-2018-xlights-around-the-world-samples-of-displays_580f366ec.html



There is a comment in these videos:
If you need help, please post in this group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/xLights

 

[LawrenceDriveLights]

My experience regarding mapping this shared sequence;
I would like to say firstly it looks like a great amount effort has gone into creating this sequence and I thank the people behind it for making it available and for sharing to community.

The below comments are just my personal view and how I went about mapping the shared sequence.
As mentioned in my original post on this thread I am a new user to xLights and I am sure there a few things (ok mistakes ) I have done which more experienced users wouldn't do but this is what I found;

I firstly just wanted to concentrate on the sequence without mapping the singing faces etc.

I found the after quickly making the "Whole House - no yard" and "Whole House - Everything" groups as per the instructional video everything seemed nice and easy to map to my elements for example arches to arches, megatree to megatree, snowflakes to my Boscoyo ChromaFlakes, etc etc etc.

Then after rendering I thought wow this is cool, but I did notice a couple of things.

Firstly I noticed a lot of red effect on the whole house





So I had a quick look at the sequence (please remember I am a new user to xLights so this may have been my mistake when I downloaded the shared sequence etc) but I noticed they had used a lot of video effects for a lot of the effects and these video are linked to a dropbox and thus xLights couldn't find the video.





So I simply changed the location the video file location from the dropbox location to the video files in my show folder where I had saved the sequence.

Then that made everything look better with the video files no linked properly

I also think you can use notepad++ to quickly change all the file links, but for my layout there was only a few to do so it didn't take me long to manually change the file location.


The next thing I found was some of the "twinkle" effects used on some of the elements and I didn't like the look of this on my arches and spiral trees (note: I also mapped the arch effects to my spiral trees). It is difficult to see but the below screenshot shows the twinkle effect on my arches in the model preview window.



I simply changed the twinkle effect to single stand by selecting single stand in the drop down in the effect settings window (I also increased the chase size to 50 as that suited my arches).



I have only just started mapping and tweaking this sequences and if possible I will add some other notes I what I do if anybody is interested.

I encourage others to make comments, add their ideas and tips (as I said I am a new user and any tips or advice would be great).

I will probably add one of the singing faces to my MegaTree, but I may look for a alternative face to use as I don't think my MegaTree will show all the details for this singing face, maybe somebody out their would like to share a suitable signing face design I could use.

----------------------
A Quick Update

After playing round with the mapping and changing some of the effects I mentioned above (e.g. change twinkle to single strand Note: The update feature in xLights makes this nice and easy).

I come up with this;

View: https://vimeo.com/288945012


I decided to go with a bit of a mix / mash up of the supplied Megatree effects and only used the one singing face (PT Barnum) as I don't have high resolution matrix type element to display the other faces and also didn't use the animal videos also for this reason.

I still might tweak a few things if I get time (I would like a alternative PT Barnum face).

Feel free to give any comments / feedback.

 

[OzAz]

Thanks for going to all this effort @LawrenceDriveLights .

I did have an issue which is only partly mentioned in the mapping video.
As he points out you need to have the 'whole house no yard' and 'whole house' groups at the top of the models list in a specific order. What wasn't fully pointed out is, that if like me you have multiple views and just add the (in my case, newly created) no yard view to your current view and then sort it, it isn't sorted correctly in the Master View.

You need to ensure the Master View has the display elements in the correct order as well as in the view you currently use.
(yeah, that should be obvious but wasn't immediately to me)

I noticed I had something wrong as the 2 moving red 'lines' at the start weren't 'overwriting' the whole house no yard orangey lights.

 

[SmartAlecLights]

I have'nt had any issues importing anything in..
I did the show elements first, (i forgot the face/matrix ones) then added them afterwards.. it was simple as..
Only issue i have is the 10minutes for it to render (600+ seconds)
but then im having fun tweaking things

 

[OzAz]

OK, on the hunt for some low resolution animated graphics to replace the animal videos (lion, bear, elephant).
if anyone finds some good ones please post link here. Cheers.

 

[OzAz]

Found some low resolution animal pictures on this site not animated though

 

[davenmarcia]

I just tried a video converter and got the bear to 425kb Looking at file size the gold curtain is 77mb plus the other videos at 40mb each all add up to slow the render down.
I can share the bear if you wish to test it out. I will put it on the google drive.

Edit it appears i can't upload to the drive

 

[LawrenceDriveLights]

I just tried a video converter and got the bear to 425kb Looking at file size the gold curtain is 77mb plus the other videos at 40mb each all add up to slow the render down.

Nice tip @davenmarcia I converted the video files in particular the gold curtain down to 14mb using a free online video convertor and it has reduced the rendering times by about 200 seconds.

 

[SmartAlecLights]

I would love some animated animals for my 2 side matrix's (that are low rez).
This is the best i have done at tweeking. (care to give feedback)

 

[LawrenceDriveLights]

I recorded some of the mapped sequence running on some of the props from my layout in my garage.

Warning: Very bad audio (a combination of terrible laptop speakers and recording on a iPhone).


View: https://vimeo.com/289180639

 

[cdjazman]

Found some low resolution animal pictures on this site not animated though

I grabbed the lion, elephant and bear and did a little Piskel action on them...... not great but not a massive video either....

Also grabbed some reindeer for the fun of it...

 

[Ellis]

View: https://youtu.be/oGso55TmkRk

 

[ChristmasInKaralee]

View: https://youtu.be/oGso55TmkRk

That looks great. Where did you get the mouth images from for the lipsync.

 

[Ellis]

That looks great. Where did you get the mouth images from for the lipsync.

I've been working on making some faces etc, still some tweaking to do but looking good

 

[Cove Tech]

I'm having a weird issue with the MegaTree. In Xlights the faces are working, but on the tree you can't see them; everything is one big blur. Is there a certain configuration I should have?