xl/nc: New major release 3.5.0, Auto creation of Whole House Model

[smeighan]

xl/nc: New major release 3.5.0, Auto creation of Whole House Model


Dave Pitts has created a wonderful new feature in xlights, Automatic Whole House model creation.
Now anyone can have a whole house model (think butterfly effect working on everything in your display) WITHOUT needing to go into the custom model screen or using a spreadsheet.
Everyone can at least try it out and you could have a whole house effect today.


How does it work?
You lay out your preview, scale objects, move them around. When you are satisfied, you press "Build Whole House Model" from the PREVIEW screen.
A model will be created (currently 400x400 resolution) , that you can add as a column to your Nutcracker grid. Thats it! This takes about 30-45 seconds on my 24K channel display.
What if you need to change your display? Just edit the preview screen, add objects, scale then, delete them. When finished , press the "Build Whole House Model" to update the model.


Does it work on non-RGB? We think mostly yes. Since the Whole house model is being built with 3 channel rgb nodes, it will group your ac stuff as 3 channel each. Dave is looking into making this work exactly as you would expect it.
Soon you could do a wash left to right of all ac elements and see it produce a chase, fades .etc. For now enjoy the RGB previews.


Kudos to Dave, a real Renaissance man!


Also, in this 3.5.0 release, Dan Kulp has fixed an issue that would crash xlights on launch. This only happened to people who had star models. Others would work fine.


And Finally, pick the version you are comfortable with, stay on 3.4.23 if u want. We try to test and make these releases stable, there is always some risk. I will run with the latest code because I like adventure...


Dave Pitts, Dan Kulp, Don Julien, Sean




XLIGHTS/NUTCRACKER RELEASE NOTES:
=================================
3.5.0 Oct 29, 2014
-enh (dpitts) New button added to the preview screen. This will create a Whole House Model for you automatically.
There is now a new type of model "Whole House". You no longer need to use spreadsheets and the custom model.
Procedure: Layout your preview. When everything is correct, press "Create Whole House Model". Give it a name.
This new whole house model should NOT have "Part of my Display" checked.
Add the new whole house model as a column in your Nutcracker grid.
enjoy the new feature, many thanks to Dave Pitts!!
-bug (dkulp) fixed issue with Star model with users sequences that were older than Oct 20th. This was crashing
xlights at launch time.

 

[bluzervic]

I may try it out as I think this is an effect worth testing...


-Blu

 

[kel]

Fantastic effort! It works like a dream ... ty

 

[buzzdude]

Excellent, now I can delete my excel spreadsheet Well done guys.

 

[bluzervic]

First of all great job guys. this is excellant


A couple thing though.


1. I tried to make a house model of all my props...I had one I was experimenting with last night that was causing the program to crash. I did not like the way the prop was behaving and upon deleting it, the program built the model and did not crash.


2. I am using the Single strand effect to do a chase. Instead of chasing left to right or right to left... starts on both the left and the right side and chases toward the middle.... they then reverse and go back the opposite direction.
All chase types do the same effect.... it is as if the chase type button has no effect.
Not sure if this is exactly how you go about doing a chase... but I will play with it more.


-Blu

 

[bluzervic]

Played with it using bars, much better chase effect. Might want to allow for faster speeds though if using a single bar
It does get faster with multiple bars.


Also, it will ask you to add the model in the preview tab if you saved your seq. in nutcracker tab and then load your seq. in the preview tab
I added it the first time and it added the whole house model in. I then deleted the house model and this time did not add the house model in... Much better.


-Blu