Nutcracker: New, real time Nutcracker. Wow!

[smeighan]

Hi All;

Matt Brown asked permission to rewrite Nutcracker into xLights. His version is what I want to do with Nutcracker next year. His version gives immediate feedback while creating effects. Think sliding bars for all my effects and watch the window as you slide them.

Amazing Matt!

Here was his post on the xLights thread
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Well, I have been working hard on xLights - as you will see if you download version 2012d. Once again, I have put it in my dropbox instead of SourceForge because I don't feel the Sequence tab is "fully baked". However, I know the 2012c version had some bugs and I wanted to get a new version out that addressed those. So here it is:

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I have tried to address all of scheduling bugs (I am using this version to schedule my show). I also tried to fix the lag issue with the Etherdongle.

The Sequence tab is new and I know it will need some explaining - which I will try to do by responding to posts in this forum. To get started, the effects are based on Nutcracker (with Sean's permission). The Life and Snowstorm effects are not implemented yet and there isn't a Twinkle effect yet, but everything else is there. The nice thing is that all of the effects are created real time -- you can change the parameters by dragging a slider and instantly see the results. Some effects are enhanced - notably the Text effect allows you to choose any font installed on your system along with the font size. This includes fonts like Wingdings, or "Xmas dings" or other fonts with icons/graphics.

Model creation also has some enhancements: 1) you can start your string numbering from the left or right, 2) it can control strings that are not in RGB order.

Where things really differ from Nutcracker is in the way you string together effects. What I have put into this version is very rudimentary. I hope to make many improvements to this area in the next year. But what you have to do for now is open an xLights sequence (.xseq file), choose which model(s) will be included in the sequence when prompted, then insert rows into the grid and for every row type in the start time in seconds when that effect should start. To add an effect to the sequence, click on the grid cell in the desired display model column and the desired start time row, then click the Update button. When you are done creating effects for the sequence, click the save icon and the xLights sequence will be updated with the effects you stored in the grid. There is no export feature - you can only update xLights sequences. However, once updated you can convert the xLights sequence to Vixen format for viewing/tweaking.

That's it for now. Merry Christmas!

Matt

So how does this compare to the current Nutcracker, in almost all ways it is better!



What is missing?

TARGETS:
watch out if  strings  dont fold evenly. take a 10x50 and make 3 strands out of each string. This would make 3 strands of 16 pixels each with two left over.

In nutcracker, if you say always start pixel 1 at the bottom of your tree you would end up with 480 out of the 500 pixels being used. in xLights it uses 498 pixels. In other words it used the extra two pixels. If your strings divide evenly this wont matter. if i had 50 pixels divided by 2, then everything would be the same as nutcracker and xlights. Most people want node 1 of a string to be at the bottom.

Like Nutrcracker it does not have the ability to start strings in the upper left or upper right corner.

As an additional feature, it does support starting at the bottom right. Nutcracker does not have this.

It has BOTH  vertical AND horizontal matrices. For all of you with horizontal matrices, you could get effects this season.

EFFECTS

What is working:
bars, butterfly, color wash, fire, garlands, meteors, pictures, snowflakes, text
Note; matt does not have vertical and horizontal bars. This was added to my effect after he converted. His Spirals DOES support vertical bars (And they work).


Text is so much better than mine. Matt implemented all of the fonts you have in windows and you can scale the font. Arial, Time Roman, .etc. 10 pt, 48pt. His text effect is very cool! In fact i am going to create text for my tree using his effect.

Here is what has not been implemented yet.
gif, life, snowstorm

PROJECTS

Does not yet support audacity label files. It does support marking phrases. I would print out your project with the timing marks and enter them into xLights.

OUTPUTS

Nutcracker:
    Vixen: vix, vir
    LOR: lms,lcb
    HLS: hlsnc
    LSP: UserPatterns.xml
xLights
    Vix vix
    xLights xseq
    Conductor seq

So i took a vix file converted it to xseq
Now i attach xLights effect to it. save it as updated xseq
I can use this xseq between my songs. I can also convert the xseq back to Vixen vix format.

Again, download xLights version D from You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login

Here is a 20 minute video i made using Matt's xLights.

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login

Awesome job Matt!

sean

[kgustafson]

Hi All;

Matt Brown asked permission to rewrite Nutcracker into xLights. His version is what I want to do with Nutcracker next year. His version gives immediate feedback while creating effects. Think sliding bars for all my effects and watch the window as you slide them.

Amazing Matt!

Here was his post on the xLights thread
You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login

Well, I have been working hard on xLights - as you will see if you download version 2012d. Once again, I have put it in my dropbox instead of SourceForge because I don't feel the Sequence tab is "fully baked". However, I know the 2012c version had some bugs and I wanted to get a new version out that addressed those. So here it is:

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login

I have tried to address all of scheduling bugs (I am using this version to schedule my show). I also tried to fix the lag issue with the Etherdongle.

The Sequence tab is new and I know it will need some explaining - which I will try to do by responding to posts in this forum. To get started, the effects are based on Nutcracker (with Sean's permission). The Life and Snowstorm effects are not implemented yet and there isn't a Twinkle effect yet, but everything else is there. The nice thing is that all of the effects are created real time -- you can change the parameters by dragging a slider and instantly see the results. Some effects are enhanced - notably the Text effect allows you to choose any font installed on your system along with the font size. This includes fonts like Wingdings, or "Xmas dings" or other fonts with icons/graphics.

Model creation also has some enhancements: 1) you can start your string numbering from the left or right, 2) it can control strings that are not in RGB order.

Where things really differ from Nutcracker is in the way you string together effects. What I have put into this version is very rudimentary. I hope to make many improvements to this area in the next year. But what you have to do for now is open an xLights sequence (.xseq file), choose which model(s) will be included in the sequence when prompted, then insert rows into the grid and for every row type in the start time in seconds when that effect should start. To add an effect to the sequence, click on the grid cell in the desired display model column and the desired start time row, then click the Update button. When you are done creating effects for the sequence, click the save icon and the xLights sequence will be updated with the effects you stored in the grid. There is no export feature - you can only update xLights sequences. However, once updated you can convert the xLights sequence to Vixen format for viewing/tweaking.

That's it for now. Merry Christmas!

Matt

So how does this compare to the current Nutcracker, in almost all ways it is better!



What is missing?

TARGETS:
watch out if  strings  dont fold evenly. take a 10x50 and make 3 strands out of each string. This would make 3 strands of 16 pixels each with two left over.

In nutcracker, if you say always start pixel 1 at the bottom of your tree you would end up with 480 out of the 500 pixels being used. in xLights it uses 498 pixels. In other words it used the extra two pixels. If your strings divide evenly this wont matter. if i had 50 pixels divided by 2, then everything would be the same as nutcracker and xlights. Most people want node 1 of a string to be at the bottom.

Like Nutrcracker it does not have the ability to start strings in the upper left or upper right corner.

As an additional feature, it does support starting at the bottom right. Nutcracker does not have this.

It has BOTH  vertical AND horizontal matrices. For all of you with horizontal matrices, you could get effects this season.

EFFECTS

What is working:
bars, butterfly, color wash, fire, garlands, meteors, pictures, snowflakes, text
Note; matt does not have vertical and horizontal bars. This was added to my effect after he converted. His Spirals DOES support vertical bars (And they work).


Text is so much better than mine. Matt implemented all of the fonts you have in windows and you can scale the font. Arial, Time Roman, .etc. 10 pt, 48pt. His text effect is very cool! In fact i am going to create text for my tree using his effect.

Here is what has not been implemented yet.
gif, life, snowstorm

PROJECTS

Does not yet support audacity label files. It does support marking phrases. I would print out your project with the timing marks and enter them into xLights.

OUTPUTS

Nutcracker:
    Vixen: vix, vir
    LOR: lms,lcb
    HLS: hlsnc
    LSP: UserPatterns.xml
xLights
    Vix vix
    xLights xseq
    Conductor seq

So i took a vix file converted it to xseq
Now i attach xLights effect to it. save it as updated xseq
I can use this xseq between my songs. I can also convert the xseq back to Vixen vix format.

Again, download xLights version D from You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login

Here is a 20 minute video i made using Matt's xLights.

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login

Awesome job Matt!

sean

This is awesome.  I will be using xlights for next year.  Is Matt looking for coders? *grin*

Kurt

[dowdybrown]

Thanks for the analysis Sean. You dove in with both feet!

One clarification:

In nutcracker, if you say always start pixel 1 at the bottom of your tree you would end up with 480 out of the 500 pixels being used. in xLights it uses 498 pixels. In other words it used the extra two pixels. If your strings divide evenly this wont matter. if i had 50 pixels divided by 2, then everything would be the same as nutcracker and xlights. Most people want node 1 of a string to be at the bottom.

In this example of 10 50-node strings, each folded 3 times, I think Nutcracker and xLights are aligned. Nutcracker is written to export the 48 nodes/string that have activity. xLights is written to physically drive the 50 nodes/string. The extra two nodes will be black, but they need to be counted as part of the physical addressing. If you check the node numbers in the Channel Layout screen, I think you will see what I mean -- nodes 49 and 50 are skipped in this scenario. Cheers,

Matt