Help with an effect.

spaulgal

spaulgal

Apprentice elf
Joined
Oct 14, 2022
Messages
92
Hello,
I'm moving a sequence over from Vixen to xlights. The importer did a decent job but I'm obviously having to tweak a lot of things.

In my display, we have 4 vertical elements. Single row, about 200 pixels high. They are grouped in a group called "verticals".
In vixen, I was able to apply a "chase" effect to the group. I set it so the effect looked like a comet with a tail (about 15 pix long) I set "left to right" and the comet would go from the bottom of vertical #1 to top, Top of vertical 2 to bottom, bottom of vertical 3 to top and top of vert 4 to bottom.

In xlights I set up the "comet" no issues using the Single Strand effect. Looks great.
I set Left to Right; 3D fade, Group all arches.
Using these settings, the comet goes up all 4 verticals simultaneously. Is there a way to have them stagger up and down consecutively like they did in vixen? I did play with some of the layer effects and no dice. Because the verticals are made up of multiple pixel strands a lot of the adjustment in there didn't quite work.
I can of course do the effect manually-- using each element individually, but we have a ton of these effects and if there was some way to do it in the group it would save hours and hours.
Thanks!
 
Hi SPG. I am not an Xlights guru, but only a couple of weeks ago sorted out and exact same issue.
In your layout tab, set the start of the first of your verticals at the bottom, then the start of the next vertical at the top...and repeat.
In the sequencer tab open the layer settings window and in the buffer tab on the "render style" select Horizontal stack or Vertical stack, which ever works for you.
Chase should start at bottom of first vertical, then top of next vertical.
The buffer stuff is really neat and has helped me sort out alot of those issues.

Hope you get it sorted out.

Jim
 
Thanks Jim, that would work, but it would break other effects in my particular case. It does introduce an idea though -- I can try to slight tilt the verticals and see if a L to R effect might work then,
 
Hello,

I don't do ANY of my own sequences and import from those more skilled. My thought would be to create 2 new groups, one for up and one for down and sequence them that way. While smaller groups they are still groups. Just a thought.
 
Anyway, I have a proposal for you, based on submodels and a special group for this effect. (This approach will always work, regardless of whether it happens to be wired in an alternating way.)

1. Create submodels for your vertical element models. Say they're "Single Line" models, though you didn't say. For each, click "Submodels", Add new, fill in the label (maybe call it "Reverse") and then put the nodes in reverse, say "200-1" for a 200-node line.
2. Create a new group, add model 1, reverse submodel 2, model 3, reverse submodel 4
3. Muck with Display Elements to make sure the new group is available in your sequence
4. Put the chase effect on this group. Set the "Render Style" to single line.

I tried this and it looks the way I think you want it to look, based on your description. It does occur to me that you might be a new user and need clarification on some of the steps, but then again you seem to have found a lot of the relevant options already... just let me know if you need anything clarified.
 
spaulgal said:
Hello,
I'm moving a sequence over from Vixen to xlights. The importer did a decent job but I'm obviously having to tweak a lot of things.

In my display, we have 4 vertical elements. Single row, about 200 pixels high. They are grouped in a group called "verticals".
In vixen, I was able to apply a "chase" effect to the group. I set it so the effect looked like a comet with a tail (about 15 pix long) I set "left to right" and the comet would go from the bottom of vertical #1 to top, Top of vertical 2 to bottom, bottom of vertical 3 to top and top of vert 4 to bottom.

In xlights I set up the "comet" no issues using the Single Strand effect. Looks great.
I set Left to Right; 3D fade, Group all arches.
Using these settings, the comet goes up all 4 verticals simultaneously. Is there a way to have them stagger up and down consecutively like they did in vixen? I did play with some of the layer effects and no dice. Because the verticals are made up of multiple pixel strands a lot of the adjustment in there didn't quite work.
I can of course do the effect manually-- using each element individually, but we have a ton of these effects and if there was some way to do it in the group it would save hours and hours.
Thanks!
Click to expand...

Not exactly perfect but you can try using 2 layers on your verticals group.
Put a Single Line on the bottom layer. Set the Chase Size to 30, Cycles to 2, Chase Type to Left-Right, leave 3d unchecked. Set the Render Style to 'Single Line Model as a Pixel'
Put a Single Line on the top layer Set the Chase size to 30 and Cycles to 4, Chase Type is 'Bounce from Left'. 3D Fade checked. On layer settings set Transformation to 'Rotate CC 90' and on the Layer Blending window change it to '2 is True Unmask.
 
The wiring is a bit wonky. It's different for each one and in some cases the strands start somewhere in the middle and extend in both directions. As far as I know there was nothing in Vixen that respected wiring order. display elements would behave only according to how the show was laid out in the Preview (Layout in xlights)
these vertical elements are actually setup on a stage and have been installed since 2016 so they are a carry over.
reading your other post now....
 
spaulgal said:
As far as I know there was nothing in Vixen that respected wiring order. display elements would behave only according to how the show was laid out in the Preview (Layout in xlights)
Click to expand...
In order to do this, you need to change the render mode of the effect.
Different props have different ways to render by default.

To get what you're after, you want to set the render mode to "Per Preview" and select 2D, or one of your saved 3D views, so that it renders as if the camera was looking from that angle.
This can also be set to "Per Model Per Preview" if you want the same effect to be rendered across individual models in a group, rather than across the group as a whole (assuming you're using a group)

1667249322689.png
 
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