Xlights RGB & DMX Sequencing

[mikedbom]

I've been watching the xlights tutorials that Sean has made and they are great and I have learned a lot about sequencing for RGB.  However I still have DMX driven displays and was wondering if anyone else has a good way to sequence for those DMX displays.  I have used random effects and even though it assigns my DMX models an effect and they turn on when they should, there are some points during a song where I would like all the lights to go full brightness and then back into the effects.  I am thinking once i get done with the RGB, I can export to Vixen and do the DMX sequencing from there.  Is that the best way?  Any advice would be appreciated.

[duane.mosley]

i would do my dmx in vixen so i could use the visualizer and see what's going on. then you can combine the two threw xlights. that's how i did mine.

[mikedbom]

the conversions over to vixen seem straight forward.  i am starting in xlights cuz i want to import audacity and timing labels.  should i even bother with creating a model for dmx elements?  also, is there a way to "bookmark" the timing block in the nutcracker tab to have it transfer over to vixen?  was gonna try some trial and error with that. if not, i'm hoping the timing will line up across both software platforms. 

[jnealand]

I have models for DMX - 64 string megatree, sixteen 3 color mini trees, strobes, and a channel 3D star on mega tree.  My mini trees are red, green and white.  I lied and called them 3 channel RGB so that I could put them on the preview screen and have them look like a tree although I must remember that blue is white on the preview screen.  I doubled up and then made a mini tree "color" model  that I said was a single colored string with 16 nodes with one model for each color in order to chase the trees since you cannot chase across 16 individual models.  For my star I made 3 stars and put them side by side on the preview screen so I could see each channel light up.  For my mega tree I made 4 single color trees and then in the preview screen I overlayed them but put them one pixel apart so I could see each color on the screen.  Works pretty good.  On the image below you will notice two lines for each of my gutters and each of my windows.  One represents the 3 hybrid channels and the other next to it represents the individual nodes so I can see the new stuff I do with chases, etc, but still see the colors that are programmed in my old sequences that use hybrid mode.  Hope this helps give you some ideas.

[mikedbom]

Jim,

what effect are giving them to make them visible in the preview...and can you control it?  I'm going the vixen route but would love to have a sequencer that can do it all instead on bouncing between two softwares.  so if it is possible in xlights, i'm all ears.

[jnealand]

I do not understand your question.  Once I built models for my DMX stuff they show up whenever I play a sequnce in the prview tab.  i am mostly converting old Vixen sequences and adding RGB effects for my new stuff.  One problem I had (have) is that most of my old vixens used hybrid mode last year since I was still pretty new to RGB and tools like the current nutcracker were just not quite ready IMHO although I did do one song using the old online nutcracker that had nothing running but my pixel tree.

[mikedbom]

Jim,

I'm under the impression that if you create a model but leave it at none, none, nothing will show up in the preview.  I made a model for each DMX element and then gave them a random effect so i could see them move around in the preview.  I also did this so when I exported to vixen, the channels were named and the effect was placed in the same timing mark as the rest of the RGB stuff.  That way I can just go in and edit the DMX elements and keep my timing in line with RGB. 

I guess my process would be more for new sequencers.  I do not have any Vixen sequences to convert so I am starting in Xlights and converting to Vixen and then back to Xlights so i can use the scheduler.  I was hoping I was doing this the right way and was curious to see if there are others using Xlights to Vix and back.  I'm finding that going 100% RGB would make sequencing a slam dunk.

[jnealand]

If I was starting from scratch I would probably put an effect like a color wash so that they would be easy to find  when I went to vixen to do editing there.  I do go back and forth to vixen and xlights because I have things I created last year for the RGB lights that I have been unable to recreate with the current nutcracker software.  I can get close to some, but not to all.  my understanding of none, none will just prevent xlights from writing over anything that you already have in an effect in a sequence that you converted into xlights, but I have found that if I do not create anything for the element(model) that I want to leave alone, I just never create an effect in nutcracker for that model and xlights leave those channels alone when you save the file.  For example, I added 6 RGB porch columns this year.  I have them in my vixen profile and I have them each as a model in nutcracker.  I have opened a vixen sequence, added effects for the porch columns saved the file, exported it back to vixen, opened it in vixen and the original stuff is still there along with the new RGB effects that I added.