Hey I guess I should post here since I have already started to post on here.
Quick about me, I have always loved Christmas lights. I take my family to the Toledo zoo lights every year. (They have over a million lights). I have always wanted to do an epic light show, but never really saw anything that inspired me to do it until I went to see the Wynn Road Christmas lights here in Oregon this past year. Before the show was even over I was googling trying to figure out how to do it.
I have been abscessed ever since lol. My planned show for 2017 is about 3800 lights, all 12mm bullet pixels.
16x50 mega tree
4 leaping arches with 11 spoke fan
2 24x24 pixel matrices
The roofline and both dormers all have a top and bottom row of pixel lights and 3,4,5,4 icicles below those.
My technical background is I have 2 undergraduate degrees, one in Computer Science, the other in Industrial Electrical Maintenance and Automation.
Following advice I read on another forum I tried a few different sequencers. I started with HLS, but found it over tedious, then moved to Vixen3, which I really liked, especially liked the ability to put groups in groups to have a nice clean logical layout to sequence from. Downside of Vixen for me was how tedious it was to set-up the preview. Probably this was exaggerated for me since my show design was evolving daily since I was still trying to figure out what my layout would look like.
Finally I tried xlights and really was blown away. Super easy to set-up the lights and create the house preview. I have sequenced 5 complete songs now in xlights. I notice the latest beta has the ability to put groups in groups now, which I liked a lot in Vixen3. I find the views pretty confusing still, but I have a system.
Originally when I started sequencing in xlights I would just add all models and groups to the sequence. Which was a bit cumbersome I came to find. I did that because I didn't know you could drill down inside a group by double clicking it. I have since wanted to go back and remove the individual models and just leave the groups. But, I am a little confused how to do that. Send like when I delete an individual model from the view, all the sequencing on that model is deleted too. Even though when I drill down into the group where that model is, I see the effects there to. So not sure how to fix that.
BTW, thanks so much for the xlights tutorials on YouTube, I have found them to be an invaluable resource!
If anyone is interested I will post some house previews of my shows from xlights as soon as I figure out how to record it. I tried using fraps, but it won't record the house preview, it just records the timeline. Doesn't look like there is a way to generate a video of the house preview anyway in xlights. Maybe I will ask for that to be added on the xlights forum feature request.
Anyway, cheers.
Quick about me, I have always loved Christmas lights. I take my family to the Toledo zoo lights every year. (They have over a million lights). I have always wanted to do an epic light show, but never really saw anything that inspired me to do it until I went to see the Wynn Road Christmas lights here in Oregon this past year. Before the show was even over I was googling trying to figure out how to do it.
I have been abscessed ever since lol. My planned show for 2017 is about 3800 lights, all 12mm bullet pixels.
16x50 mega tree
4 leaping arches with 11 spoke fan
2 24x24 pixel matrices
The roofline and both dormers all have a top and bottom row of pixel lights and 3,4,5,4 icicles below those.
My technical background is I have 2 undergraduate degrees, one in Computer Science, the other in Industrial Electrical Maintenance and Automation.
Following advice I read on another forum I tried a few different sequencers. I started with HLS, but found it over tedious, then moved to Vixen3, which I really liked, especially liked the ability to put groups in groups to have a nice clean logical layout to sequence from. Downside of Vixen for me was how tedious it was to set-up the preview. Probably this was exaggerated for me since my show design was evolving daily since I was still trying to figure out what my layout would look like.
Finally I tried xlights and really was blown away. Super easy to set-up the lights and create the house preview. I have sequenced 5 complete songs now in xlights. I notice the latest beta has the ability to put groups in groups now, which I liked a lot in Vixen3. I find the views pretty confusing still, but I have a system.
Originally when I started sequencing in xlights I would just add all models and groups to the sequence. Which was a bit cumbersome I came to find. I did that because I didn't know you could drill down inside a group by double clicking it. I have since wanted to go back and remove the individual models and just leave the groups. But, I am a little confused how to do that. Send like when I delete an individual model from the view, all the sequencing on that model is deleted too. Even though when I drill down into the group where that model is, I see the effects there to. So not sure how to fix that.
BTW, thanks so much for the xlights tutorials on YouTube, I have found them to be an invaluable resource!
If anyone is interested I will post some house previews of my shows from xlights as soon as I figure out how to record it. I tried using fraps, but it won't record the house preview, it just records the timeline. Doesn't look like there is a way to generate a video of the house preview anyway in xlights. Maybe I will ask for that to be added on the xlights forum feature request.
Anyway, cheers.
