Nutcracker: What new effects would you like to see?

smeighan

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JonB256 said:
Two things I mentioned in other locations:


A slider for overall intensity. Using an input to the HSV conversion, hopefully could control the intensity without dramatically affecting the actual color.


and, for a Matrix (horizontal or vertical), an input in the Model creation for the pixel aspect ratio. Currently it assumes a 1:1 aspect. If your pixels are 33mm apart horizontally (like on a flex strip), it assumes that the distance is also 33mm the other direction. If you put your strips/pixels at 50mm, then text can get stretched and hard to read. (like a funhouse mirror). But, if it allowed a Horizontal and Vertical distance entry, it could compensate.


I agree to all your suggestions. We plan in implementing some more global controls besides the one Sparkle slider.


New ones will be
1) Fade in, Fade out. You specify seconds, or fractions of a second. Will fade in from black and fade out to black.
2) Overall intensity. This will adjust the brightness in the HSV model so that an overall effect can be toned down. I find the butterfly effect so bright, i will probably tone done the brightness on that.


These will apply to every effect regardless of the target.


Now for some more target model controls.
We want to allow the start of the wrap from any of the 4 corners of the model.
we would like to be able to change the aspect ratio.


For effects
we want to allow scaling the effects. This will help with crunched text. I want to expand text vertically on my 30 pixels/m flex strips. I dont want to strecth the other effects.


thanks
sean
 

Habbosrus

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Fire to build in intensity (height) over time. For example, if your fire effect goes for 20 seconds, it starts very low and increases in height &/or speed over the duration. Also with fire, the capability to use different colours. I've done some testing using Nutcracker fire effect in HLS and changed the colours and it looks great.
 

damo1271

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Horizontal bars would be nice, in addition to the verticle bars.
(I have a led matrix.)
thanks
Damo
 

BundyRoy

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I would really love to see and outward growing spiral. I'm guessing it's not that easy to do but it would be great. It is shown in this video at the 1:30 mark. The sequence shown was done with superstar.

Pixel tree testing 2014 on Vimeo

Thanks again for sharing nutcracker/xlights with the world. It is a great tool already and always getting better.
 

AAH

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Not actually an effect but wondering if there is a model likely to appear for a radial star/firework type thing. I've heard you mention it in a tutorial and saw something like it implemented in vixen 3. This is 1 of the props I'm hoping to add this year and it was the 1 that I was planning on playing with a fair bit on xlights pretty soon to see what I could do.
 

smeighan

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On the globe have each arch have same number of pixels. Use a vert matrix model. All effects will work on globe, including text. You just won't have a globe preview
 

arw01

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+1 on the fireworks type element. I have the two porcupines running now and am starting to look for none flashy pulsing down the spikes effects.


A couple in nutcracker like up down and using curtain with a 1 reveals 2 sort of effect was interesting. Trying to figure this out myself.


Alan
 

smeighan

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for the porcupine, use a vert matrix.
have the top of the vert matric be the center of the porcupine balls.


now use meteors, spirals, bars. all will work.


text , snowflakes, game of life will work but wont look as expected
 

AAH

I love blinky lights :)
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I started watching the tutorial on creating a whole house prop a week or so ago and ended up giving up on the idea of actually doing it as it seemed like hard convoluted work. It did get me thinking though and I had a cunning plan. I know that there are some great software gurus involved in the development of xlights/nutcracker and I thought one or more of those mega brains could possibly do something with my idea.
On the preview tab it's actually pretty easy to create individual props and put them where you want them and assign channels etc to them. I thought that 1 of the gurus would know how to convert from all the models and the placement on the preview screen to a single model that has everything in it where you want it. I might be wrong, I often am :)
 

smeighan

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this was our plan. get the x,y location of the placement of the obejects and use it to create a whole house model. Matt Brown was looking into this last march. It turned out not to be as straight forward as we hoped. it could still be done in codeblocks , but would be somewhat harder to implement.


and then matt left.


so we will have to wait until next year to implement the whole house model the right way.
 

AAH

I love blinky lights :)
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Bugger. Didn't know that Matt had left.
There's not much news happening from his new job though :(
 

arw01

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I installed Code::Blocks and now need to pester Sean into explaining the intricacies of GITHUB (that's a mystery since the SVN days). And then maybe, just maybe, I can make some little bitty insignificant contribution to xlights in some manner in all the spare time I don't have :D
 

tonyh

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I'd love to see an undo button. To many times I've inadvertently
Hit a wrong key stroke and erased a effect and couldn't get
It back. :'(
 

bluzervic

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LOR Superstar allows you to do different types of Morphs. I would love to see the morph capability added.


Basically it is 4 different parts:


1. begin morph color
2. end morph color
3. begin morph tail color
4. end morph tail color


Speed, length of the head and tail of the morph are also factors... and have settings


For examples see my matrix in this Video


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7m4bvE7ZQ0


Or search for bluzervic in youtube.


-Blu
 

arw01

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So basically a morph is a blend like LSP does from one color to another?


I thought on Seans some day list is to completely redo the color picker in nutcracker.
 
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