Cheesy question... way to make classical multicolor pattern for RGB pixels?

[nutz4lights]

For YEARS (almost a decade), I have despised the way that multi-color lights look.... and have never used them... but now that we have a full display of RGB pixels and nodes... I thought <actually, my better half thought> "why not have a portion of a sequence where the whole display dips into a bit of history and displays a full multi-color display?!" We already have dialed in the "warm white look" <RGB: 255, 103, 23 for my lights and my taste!> and now would like to try the multicolor look. SO, this is what I'm referring to:

Is there a way (I use LSP, but I'm curious in general) to create a pattern of alternating individual pixel outputs to produce: red, green, purple, blue, yellow, orange? I know I can make those colors in large arrays, but I'm talking truly random, or not so random, such that the string looks like it is a standard multi-color string.

Thanks,

-Louie

 

[nutz4lights]

So I ended up figuring this out as I was watching one of the videos from the five part Lightshow Pro training videos. I have no idea where those videos came from, but I had downloaded them to my computer (can anybody comment?). Anyway, in LSP, it turns out that there is a way to copy only certain pixels into a layer that is highlighted in the video. I knew about that ability, but I guess it wasn't until I was re-watching the video that it clicked in my head that this would work for my multicolor interests... Here is what I did:

1. I already had a layer that contained all of my RGB elements. My whole display is RGB for the most part (only thing that isn't is an old incandescent rope light 3-way star megatree topper and my incandescent rope light Merry Christmas sign (red and green, each letter individually addressable). That RGB layer contains all of my dumb nodes and smart pixels. For this exercise, I wanted this "multicolor" effect applied only to the smart stuff... so I had to create a new "RGB all" layer with only the smart elements. That is the first step. Copy all of the RGB elements into that layer. Call it something like 'RGB_PIXEL_ALL'
2. Next step is to define how many colors you want your classic multi-color look to encompass. For me, I went with red, green, blue, yellow, orange, and purple, so SIX colors
3. You then need to create several new layers, if you pick six colors, then six layers, five colors? five layers. I called these layers MULTICOLOR-POS1 through MULTICOLOR-POS6
4. The next step is probably going to be confusing, but it is more easily shown in the video, Session 2, around the 10 minute mark. With the RGB_PIXEL_ALL layer selected, and all the RGB pixel elements showing, you have to select all the cells and then select "link to layer". There is an option to link only every nth pixel to each of the layers and there is an option to skip the first nth pixels in doing so. Basically you are going to assign pixels 1, 7, 13, 19, etc. to MULTICOLOR-POS1 and pixels 2, 8, 14, 20, etc to MULTICOLOR-POS2, pixels 3, 9, 15, 21, etc to MULTICOLOR-POS3, and so on and so forth. To link the channels to the POS1 layer, you would NOT select the skip first nth option (you want it to start at pixel 1) and you WOULD select the skip every nth pixel option and set it to 6 (for my example, based on me choosing 6 colors). For the POS2 layer, you WOULD select the skip first nth option check box and put 1 (you want it to start at the 2nd pixel) and you WOULD select the skip every nth pixel option and again set it to 6. POS 3: skip first 2 pixels and skip every 6th, POS 4: skip first 3 pixels and skip every 6th, etc.
5. Once this is done, you should have six layers filled with every pixel in the display, split up between the six layers. The next thing to do is assign colors to those layers such at that any given point in time, you will have all six colors in the conventional multi-color string displayed serially on your entire display. The way I did this was with color shifter macros set to start on screen and end on screen. The first macro has one second each of the six colors, the second macro has them shifted by one color, etc, looks like this:

MACRO1: R, G, B, O, Y, P
MACRO2: G, B, O, Y, P, R
MACRO3: B, O, Y, P, R, G
MACRO4: O, Y, P, R, G, B
MACRO5: Y, P, R, G, B, O
MACRO6: P, R, G, B, O, Y
So as you can see, for the first second, the pixels are lit multicolor starting with red, from 1-2 seconds the multicolor effects shift by one, and so on and so forth.
I will try to get some videos of this effect later.... the next step is to come up with something for all of the dumb RGB elements... basically I plan on just rotating colors through those elements, since the whole string will light up it will look different than the pixel-based elements, but we'll see how it all looks...
-Louie