Sequencing perpendicular strings

[Iain]

Does anyone have tips for sequence a string that runs perpendicular to the "front" fenceline/viewport? Most XLights effects work on a front facing cross section, but I have a couple of strings I'm trying to use to "tie" my house to the front fenceline. What ends up happening is the entire string comes on at once with the same colour. I'm guessing because when viewed as a cross section, a line that travels away from the perspective looks like a point.

Things like the marquee, pinwheel, single strand all do this if my string is grouped with other effects on the fence line. Do I have to place an effect on this string separately, and rotate it on the z axis or something?

thanks!

 

[Skymaster]

Try using "Single Line" render type; or "Per Model Single Line" for Groups

 

[Iain]

So the Single Strand rendered as "single line" seems to go through my entire display as if it were one long line end to end. I guess that's what it means.

Rendered as "per model single line" does the same but all models at once (so each model has it's own line at the same time). This looks good on the perpendicular strings. It's quite different to "default" for the rest of the house - which treats the entire display as one canvas.

The best way seems to be to take the perpendicular string out of the "all" or "fences" groups, and put a specific effect on that one string.

Looking at something like "plasma", an effect on my "all" group makes the perpendicular string all the same colour. "per model single line" changes the all effect, so again, the best way seems to be "all" for the everything else, and a second plasma effect just on the perpendicular string.

That seems to work ok, I might just group all my perpendicular strings into their own group for their own effects.

 

[Skymaster]

Yep so everything renders in a 2D buffer. And those perpendicular are as you said, just a single dot face on. You could create a new camera angle and render from that angle but obviously that would affect everything

I use a 3/4 front view of the house which helps a bit with some of the whole house stuff, where the perpendicular stuff gets some "depth" to it

But to accomplish what you want, with different looks of the same effect on different props, multiple groups and take different render styles night be the way to go

 

[merryoncherry]

xLights now has a per group default camera, which will assign a camera to the effects. This could theoretically be used to keep your whole perpendicular string from being the same color in whole house shockwave/bars/etc.

However, I started prior to availability of that feature, so made a utility to turn the whole display 30deg so nothing is perpendicular to the camera...

 

[Iain]

Nice, for when I forget later, the steps to do this are:

1. on the layout screen, move the view around until any perpendicular lines are now at an angle to what you see
2. right click and choose "save current viewport"
3. on the sequencer screen, choose an effect
4. in "layer settings" choose "Render Style": "Per Preview" or "Per Model Per Preview"
5. choose the Camera named from step 2

Now I can just apply an effect to the whole house, and my perpendicular lines are not all the same colour! Thanks!