Chase Spirals >proper

angus40

Senior elf
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Dec 23, 2011
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539
It took me awhile to figure this in Ae .
I used ramps rather than solid colors to give the 3d effect and also
to tame down the brightness of the pixels .
active
 

BundyRoy

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Apr 9, 2014
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Looks great Angus. Have been putting off asking as I didn't want to appear silly but curiosity has got the better of me. What is Ae.
 

angus40

Senior elf
Joined
Dec 23, 2011
Messages
539
Ae = After effects from Adobe .
This is one of the best applications I have had the pleasure to use for creating effects and syncronizing to audio .
 

BundyRoy

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Apr 9, 2014
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So you use Ae to get the effect/pattern you want and then somehow take this into HLS to control the actual lights. How do you get from Ae to HLS.
 

angus40

Senior elf
Joined
Dec 23, 2011
Messages
539
You are correct , I create the effect in Ae at per/ frame level or beat frequency then export the render as a .png sequence with the desired aspect ratio to suit the element it will be placed on in the sequencer.
Hls and Xlight/nutcracker have import features for this , in Hls under the pixel plane tab you select " convert folder of png images to effect "
this will generate a external pp effect that will be saved to the hls\nutcracker folder by default.
in Xlights\nutcracker using the "picture " function , the process is similar in that you direct nutcracker to the folder where you exported your .png sequence .
 

BundyRoy

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Thanks for explaining it. It makes a lot more sense now.

So is a .png file a single image or can it be animated to show multiple images following each other. I hope this makes sense. I guess what I'm asking is do you have to import a new .png file for each beat in the pattern or does the one .png file cover the lot.
 

angus40

Senior elf
Joined
Dec 23, 2011
Messages
539
Sorry , I was not very clear on the .png file.
When in Ae I set the effect duration using start and stop markers
Once ready to render . I set the render output to png sequence thus creating a series of images that comprise the entire effect/duration .
this can be done in photoshop also < actually nutcracker /pictures prefers the output of Ps compared to Ae .
 

BundyRoy

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Apr 9, 2014
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Thanks again Angus.

So when I'm in HLS/Nutcracker do I have to load a .png file for every beat in the effect/pattern or does the one file hold all the images for the whole effect pattern. I guess I'm trying to work out how labour intensive the process is.

It certainly seems like a good way to set up almost any pattern/image you could think of.

What sort of cost is it to get Ae.
 

BundyRoy

Dedicated elf
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Apr 9, 2014
Messages
1,026
Excellent. I (and I'm sure others) would really appreciate that. Please don't feel obliged to give this priority over other things you have going on though. I am in no rush, just interested in all the options available out there.

Thanks again for your help.
 
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