Vixen 3 - is it in your sequencing future

AussiePhil

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This post is for me to feed back to ACL my experiences in working with Vixen 3 beta(s) and for ACL members to chime in as well.

All feedback for developers and Vixen Support issues should be asked or posted in the Vixen forums at DIYC
http://doityourselfchristmas.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?12-Vixen

The official Vixen3 Beta thread can be found at
http://doityourselfchristmas.com/forums/showthread.php?18027-3-0-Beta-0
This contains the links for the download and a mile of information

If people want to look at programming modules then these videos will be of great assistance
http://doityourselfchristmas.com/forums/showthread.php?19267-Vixen-3-0-Effect-Module-Programming-tutorial

I have personally made the following video to help people get up and running with the Beta that was published late october
Vbeta3sc1
The video assumes you have Vixen3 installed

As of the 23rd Jan 2012 the only output modules included in the Beta are a preview module and a Renard Module.
Chilloutdocdoc has completed a Open DMX module that can be found at
http://doityourselfchristmas.com/forums/showthread.php?18904-Vixen-3-0-Enttec-Open-DMX-Output-Module

I am personally excited by Vixen 3, it shifts to sequencing concepts towards object oriented sequencing.
To highjack a quote "It's life, Jim, but not as we know it"
The timing grid is missing, you no longer turn on channel cell 21 for 25ms or manually hand code those chase sequences.

In Vixen3 you setup groups of lights, as in a set of mini trees or even the left and right sets plus a global set of minitrees, grouping becomes a way to logical group you display elements to apply effects to them.
Lete's say you have a two story house with RGB pixels outlining the ground floor guttering and the first story guttering, you may have groups, <GndFloorGutter><FirstFloorGutter> and <RGBGutterAll> with RGBGutterAll> containing the first two groups.
Now effects such as a colour fade could be applied to either/or each set of gutters independently or to them all just by applying the effect to the correct group of lights.
The effects are applied over a time frame, not over a set of cells, so every effect has a duration period.

Do I like it? .... I Love it.

What do i think is missing yet.
The ability to quickly set timing marks in the sequence by using scrubbing of the Audio like LSP can do.
The ability to use scaled values for light dimming values.
Further effects to acheive different things
A Matrix mapper for working with RGB megatrees
Maybe a text mapper to get text into a matrix - i'm thinking of the ledtrix tool but working with pixels directly.

What is missing that's important to most of ACL?
DMX and E131 output modules, without these most of us won;t be able to use this in real shows.

Opinion only:
Pending actual performance with real output from E131..... Could this be used now?
It is my opinion that Vixen3 could be used to sequence a great show as it stands right now for a lot of people at ACL IF it had output modules we could use.
Sallz0r over at DIYC has posted videos of his large show with lots of RGB for 2011 that was sequenced in Vixen3, this shows it actually works.

Cheers
Phil
 

aussiexmas

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Brisbane - Australia
AussiePhil said:
Sallz0r over at DIYC has posted videos of his large show with lots of RGB for 2011 that was sequenced in Vixen3, this shows it actually works.

Cheers
Phil
Just wondering if anybody from ACL visited his (Sallz0r's) display at Rochedale - Brisbane this year. I saw it last year when it was largely incandescent - but his 2011 Youtube comments indicate it was completely redone this year in LED. From discussions with visitors to my display, I believe he was late this year in getting the display going, (and he did not make the "highly commended" category in the local 4KQ lights competition after winning the synchronized section in 2010.) However his Youtube videos are most impressive.
Santa Claus is Coming to Town - 2011 - Sallaway Christmas Lights
Just wondering if anyone saw it LIVE.

Geoff
 

Bevo

Let your Light Shine before men
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I did go and have a look last year and had a chat with Michael and he had changed all his lights over to RGB LED strings. They did look great but he did not have his display fully ready for the competition and was only running it at different times.
 
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