Timing leaping arches to a timing track

[Iain]

Hi,

I've been looking for an answer to this and playing around with Xlights for a while trying to figure it out but so far it seems like it can't be done "easily".

Basically I have a number of inline arches, and I want a single strand to start at the start of a bar, and the head of it to "bounce" with a timing track - lets say it's a simple beats track. I want the strand to travel across the arches, one arch per beat. e.g. in a 4/4 tempo it would travel 4 arches in one bar. (Not trying to make them all bounce in sync - that's easy)

I can sort-of get the arches to the correct time by playing with the cycles depending on how long the effect is and how many arches I have, e.g. if the effect stretches over 8 bars/32 beats, and I have 12 arches, I need to set cycles = 32/12 = 2.66. The problems are:

• There's not enough accuracy in numbers like 2.666666 or 1.13333 which you often get with multiples of 4, 6, 8, etc.
• the timing of the strand through the arches starts with the head but ends with the tail, which introduces a growing error over the 12 arches - I could make the chase size 1 but that doesn't look as nice

How do you time your arches with one arch per beat/bar? Is there a better way? Or do you just use trial-and-error to get it right?

thanks

 

[Skymaster]

I have 5 arches which makes life fun. In a similar vain, Can you stretch the effect over 6 or 12 bars and adjust the multiple to a round number, and then put one over 2 or 4 bars for the last portion.

 

[Iain]

Yeah that doesn’t account or the tail size. I guess I just have to pull it slightly larger until it looks right.

note to self: don’t use a prime number of anything

 

[scamper]

I don't use xlights, I use vixen so not sure if xlights has it, but can you not do separate timing marks for different things and set the arches to bounce within the set of timing marks you create?

 

[Iain]

Yes you can set timing marks—manual tap or based on audio detection—but I can’t see a bounce per mark option.

It’s easy to make all arches bounce left and right together and in time, but the difficulty is in making a single strand move across them in time with the music.

 

[Skymaster]

Yeah that doesn’t account or the tail size. I guess I just have to pull it slightly larger until it looks right.

Ahh yes. I think you might need to keep the effect short - so rather than one effect for say 6 bounces (72 total across the 12), you do 6 effects for 1 bounce each. Or something like that. That way the "error" is minimised rather tahn amplified.

 

[Katekate]

you can do a single effect for each bounce. tedious to set up though.

 

[Cranzy]

Just so im understanding the question correctly.
You want each arch to bounce on a beat, if you have 6 arches and there is 4 beats you want it to only go up to 4 and stop. or 6 arches and 8 beats will light up each arch once and the remaing 2 beats will light the first 2 again?

The little video here I have 4 arches, when i set all arches to blue, i jump over 6 beats .. Then after that on the green i only do 3 beats.

 

[Iain]

sorry I've been away a while...

You want each arch to bounce on a beat, if you have 6 arches and there is 4 beats you want it to only go up to 4 and stop. or 6 arches and 8 beats will light up each arch once and the remaing 2 beats will light the first 2 again?

The second option, as I plan to have 12 arches spaced along the (long) front edge of our property. The main point being that I can set this up over, say, 8 bars or more without having to do it arch-by-arch.

My ideal scenario, (I'm a muso so timing is important!) is that it starts repeating on a multiple of 4 (for a 4/4 time sig), so arch 1 and 9 could be going together, but I would settle for just using the first 8 arches and ignoring 9-12.

e.g. for a 4/4 time signature:

bar-beat arch
1-1 arch 1
1-2 arch 2
1-3 arch 3
1-4 arch 4
2-1 arch 5
2-2 arch 6
2-3 arch 7
2-4 arch 8
3-1 arch 9 & 1
3-2 arch 10 & 2
3-3 arch 11 & 3
3-4 arch 12 & 4
4-1 arch 5
4-2 arch 6
4-3 arch 7
4-4 arch 8
5-1 arch 9 & 1
5-2 arch 10 & 2
5-3 arch 11 & 3
5-4 arch 12 & 4
6-1 arch 5
6-2 arch 6
6-3 arch 7
6-4 arch 8

and so on...

 

[keithsw1111]

Use Vu meter timed sweeps. They will perfectly match a timing track.

 

[Iain]

Use Vu meter timed sweeps. They will perfectly match a timing track.

I've been playing with this for about 15 minutes now... The best I can get it to do is sweep all 12 arches per-beat, but that's way too fast! I can't seem to slow it down per-beat-per-arch, even by playing with all the render styles in layer settings (per model, tc).

If I set it to Timing Event Sweep 2, with Per Model Single Line, then it's a cool bouncing effect but all 12 arches are doing the same thing...

Is there a trick of settings I'm missing?

thanks

 

[Cranzy]

Ok try this.
You have all your arches in a group called Arches , we will apply the effects on this group

we are going to use 2 layers.

The bottom layer you will ad a VU Meter effect.
On the settings for the VU Meter effect you will select the Type as "Timing Event Bar", Timing Track will be your beats. Set your Bars to 12 (this is the number of arches you have in the group)
Basically what this will do is light up 1 whole arch per beat.

The top layer, add a Single Strand Effect, Set the Cycles to how many beats you have. Set the Render Style to Per Model Single Line. Set the Layer Blending to 2 is True Unmask.
Basically on each beat all arches will bounce, but because you are setting 2 is True unmask, only the arch that the VU meter lights up will go on.and the bounde on that one will be visible.


You can also use a VU Meter on the top layer rather than a single line,
Set Type to Timing Event Timed Sweep, select the timing track, set the Bars to 20, Per Model Default, 2 is True Unmask.

I have zipped up a demo for you Here is the zip file to download

Here are screenshots of each effect.

Bottom Layer VU Meter Settings:


Top Layer Single Strand Effect:


Alternatively, Top Layer VU Meter Effect:

 

[Cranzy]

I have re-uploaded the zip file, as the one i linked before had another set of arches in it and I didn't save the layout before packaging it. Re-download if you downloaded before this message

 

[Iain]

wow thanks for that amazing walkthrough! One thing you brought to light is that I couldn't see the right 1/10th of the effect settings panel, so I never knew there was a "bars" setting That's answered a lot of questions on the VU meter from various demo's I've seen...

I get where you're going with the masking, it's quite good, but I'm getting this strange offset between the first and last arch. It starts like this:

but it ends up like this:


I think I will leave it there - I've spent way too much time on this already. The simplest solution of just dragging the single-strand effect until it all lines up seems to be the best looking so far.

thanks!

 

[Cranzy]

On the bottom VU meter effect, try setting the render style to "Default Model As A Pixel" and remember to set the Bars = to the number of arches you have. there should be no offset.
You are welcome to send me a copy of your layout via message and I can do the effect on your layout.