Spoiler Alert - new features coming!

[drlucas]

I get excited looking at the changes in github and seeing what's coming up. I'm most certain now going to make two BIG changes to my show next year. The first one is changing my mega tree in front of the garage to a big matrix and then going to make a mega tree from nodes based on Sean's design. Will be a project and a half this summer, but should be awesome...that is if I don't get distracted with a halloween build instead. Time will tell. Anyways, the reason I'm 99% certain of the big matrix is because of the new wavy and bouncing text effects. Can't wait to see what they will look like. Only question I have right now is how big does the matrix need to be. I want it to be big enough that I could do some nifty animations on it and big enough to be able to display Merry Christmas without scrolling text ( and ideally tall enough so this Merry will be on one line and Christmas is on the second)....that should leave enough space for when wavy text comes out.

So - how big (i.e. how many rows of flex strips do I need) do I make this matrix - 30 rows? 

[JonB256]

40x30 is a good matrix size for text and not bad for pictures.  If you are using the TM1809 strips, that is 33mm between pixels (30 pixels per meter)

I'm working up a set of 1/2" PVC rods, each one having 2 meters (60 pixels) of Flex Strips zip tied down the front.
Ultimate goal will be to make 80 of them. For now, I'm using 16 and set up as a small Mega-tree.

When/If I get 80 of them built, I'll hang them from hooks across a frame in a very nice matrix. To be very flexible, each stick will be stand-alone. That will need a lot of SSCs.

[dowdybrown]

drlucas, one of the nice things about xlights / Nutcracker is that you can create a model with any dimensions and display effects on it in the Nutcracker tab. So create some test models and see which one looks best to you.

Matt

Sent from my LG-LS840 using Tapatalk

[JDM1oc]

I'm working up a set of 1/2" PVC rods, each one having 2 meters (60 pixels) of Flex Strips zip tied down the front.
Ultimate goal will be to make 80 of them. For now, I'm using 16 and set up as a small Mega-tree.

Are you using PVC pipe or something else?

[JonB256]

I said rod, but it is 1/2" pvc pipe. Sched 20 from Lowes.

sent from my Galaxy Note

[plaberge]

drlucas, one of the nice things about xlights / Nutcracker is that you can create a model with any dimensions and display effects on it in the Nutcracker tab. So create some test models and see which one looks best to you.

Matt

Sent from my LG-LS840 using Tapatalk

You may want to scale the models in the preview window so they relatively sized to the actual viewing distance. In my case, my models were smaller than they appeared in real life with the result being that some of the things that looked good in the preview window (e.g., movie clips & text) were harder to see on my megatree because the actual viewing distance was closer. Not the end of the world but a bit disappointing.

[smeighan]

i think we will be doing work with the preview this year. oe thing i know we will be doing is switching from wxwidgets 2.9.5 library to the 3.0.0 library. Not sure exactly what new features we may have, one thing i would like to see get fixed is the ability to load a picture of your house into the preview.

[arw01]

+1 on the house preview.  But as a LSP user, I want to see Nutcracker push LSP to come up with something mind blowing too

[taybrynn]

I never even used the xlights preview till just a few nights ago ... and WOW, it was pretty good I must say.

To get my show to display that well in LOR would have been an all day or multi day effort ... got it showing pretty well in xlights in 15min.

Yes, some things are not realistic looking because I didn't use the custom models for things like snowflakes or spinners ... but I get a good idea overall.

Doing this in LSP would have been just as bad as LOR, so to me ... its already quite amazing for version 1.0 !!

Scott