Enhancement request: visualizing dumb strings, dumb string segments + groupings

[Steve Gase]

Matt,


I have a couple mega-trees that use dumb strings.  Each tree has 16 strings, and each string is treated as 1 RGB "pixel".


If I select a Tree270, or any of the tree representations, the result is a row of 16 small dots.  Its hard to get an appreciation of the specific effects on that model...




I believe the use of dumb strings might be somewhat common, and there might be a few variations in their use that would make sense to both extend and generalize within the visualizer.


I've seen people take a 5M dumb string and then cut it into 5 x 1M segments.  The result is 5 RGB pixels per string... but to the world they still have the appearance of segments, not single pixels. 


Similarly, there are people using the grouping features of the controllers to reduce channel count in the smart strings.  In this case a 100-pixel string with 5 groups might be treated in software in much the same way as 5 dumb string segments.


My suggestion is to add a new checkbox for the Line, Arch, and all Tree* models   "

• VisualizeAsLineSegments"

When this option is selected, it does not change the way channels are generated, only the way that the visualizer (both Nutcracker tab and Preview tab) display the tree.


When disabled, the trees will continue to work as-is.


When enabled, the trees will look like this...

[smeighan]

Hi Steve

When you built the model of these trees did you select "3 cool or RGB" aka dum rgb?

You should not end up with a single dot, Matt's new preview prompts

1) number of strings
2) number of nodes on string. Note, for dumb rgb this is the number that will be drawn in the preview window. It will not effect the number of channels. If you build with 3 color rgb you wilways just be using 3 channels per string.

With the 3.2.0 release you can now build any model out of 3 different string types
Smart rgb
Dumb rgb
Non rgb lights

[Steve Gase]

I found the problem... I was specifying a single pixel for each string to represent a single RGB channel.




 









Trying a few more things, I changed the number of pixels to "40".  This had the desired effect for a "3s x 1p" (or "16s x 1p") model... a long line of pixels that share the same color. 




However, this still won't address my request for a solution that deals with multiple segments, or groups of pixels. The dots remain small and difficult to observe.


Here is a "16s x 2p" tree model:

[smeighan]

Matt addressed both of these issues in last nights tutorial.

Someone asked how they could get segments in an arch, the arch made on one rgb lights. Matt said that is for a future release

Someone said the preview screen is too dark. Matt said if he were to make each pixel brighter (like was done with the nutcracker window) the preview performance would suffer. No plans to try and be able to make a bright preview for this year. He did say he would look into it next year.

[Steve Gase]

ok.  thx.
 
I tried to get in last night but the connection count was exceeded.
I tried to listen in on the recording, but Matt's voice couldn't be heard.

[rrowan]

ok.  thx.
 
I tried to get in last night but the connection count was exceeded.
I tried to listen in on the recording, but Matt's voice couldn't be heard.

Audio of Matt was very low. I could only hear him with headphones on and at max volume. Sean's breathing and his kids asking questions was easier to hear

Rick R.