Fading out of movement effects

[Richard Tayler]

I'm new to using the Fat Frog, and so far it seems to be a good solid little desk.

 

Only one thing is irritating me at the moment though. It's if you have intelligent lights moving slowly (driven by the effects engine) and then go to a scene which has them fade position, say over 4 seconds, they "snap" to the center point of the effect before taking up the fade!

 

The only way I've found around this is to match the motorspeed to the desired fade time, but this can add loads of programming time. (I work in corporate events where setup time is limited at the best of times)

 

Would it be difficult for the fade to take the last x,y value from the effect position, rather than just from its center?

 

Thanks for listening.

 

Cheerio.

[K-Nine]

What version of software are you using Richard ?

 

Only one thing is irritating me at the moment though. It's if you have intelligent lights moving slowly (driven by the effects engine) and then go to a scene which has them fade position, say over 4 seconds, they "snap" to the center point of the effect before taking up the fade!

...

 

Would it be difficult for the fade to take the last x,y value from the effect position, rather than just from its center?

 

I have just taken a look at this using a Fat Frog in our demo room and indeed the fixtures do apppear to snap to a particular position and then fade to the new position as you describe.

 

Further investigation has shown that they snap to the start position of the effect rather then the centre or base pan/tilt position.

 

However, I do agree they should fade from their current position in the effect to the new position in the next memory.

 

Frog Reference 5394 - Fading from memories with movement effects - positions snap to start position before fading to next memory.

[djwiltsh]

Hi All

 

I have 2 MAC 250s on a drum riser, which are either in fixed positions or doing small, slow movement effects.

 

The problem I have is that when I trigger a movement effect (either from a static position or from another movement that's already running) the lights snap to the start position of the new movement.

 

I would like them to fade slowly into the start position then start moving, as all the moves are really slow and the snap looks awful.

 

I have tried putting the movements into the position palletes and I have tried them in subs and memories with long fade times for all the fades.

 

Any advice?

 

Thanks

 

Daniel

[Kirkup_xp]

Hi Daniel

 

Try the following:

 

-Program your first memory as required (the static position)

-Program your second memory (the movement effect) as follows:

*Convert the memory to a chase

*Program Step 1 of the chase as the memory you require but with an effect size of 0

*Program Step 2 of the chase as the memory you require with the correct effect size

*Set the Position attribute to Fade in the Chase Settings

*Set the chase to "Shots" of 1.

 

This should give you a much nicer crossfade, although it is not perfect. Unfortunately the snap is due to the resyncronising of the effect which happens when you trigger it.

 

 

 

I hope this helps.

 

 

 

Peter Kirkup

Zero88 Product Support

[djwiltsh]

Thank you!

 

Dan

[RoyF18]

Hi,

on a Fat Frog, I have a couple of movers doing a slowish searchlight thing in one cue (using the Figure8 effect in the position mode) and then in the next cue they are doing more or less the same (Figure8 effect) but slightly faster. The problem I'm having is that when I go from the first cue to the next the movers cut round to the start of the effect and then begin to move again, rather than just continuing the effect but increasing the speed smoothly which is what I'm after. Is it possible to do anything about this?

Cheers for any help

Roy

[CBMatt]

There are 2 other things that I encountered while programming a new show the other day that I wanted to bring to your attention.

 

When using the shape generator I noticed that when you come out of the cue running the shape and go into a new cue with a fade time on the position the shape generators functions also fade down with the fade time. This makes the lights jump and jerk all over the place. It seems to me that those functions should always snap back to normal so that a smooth fade can be accomplished.

 

The other thing I'm noticing is that when I bring down a sub with a chase running and then put it back up it doesn't reload the LTP fade time and the lights quickly snap to their first position. The only time it reloads the fade time is if I run another chase on the same page or I switch pages and come back to it.

 

I've tried to explain this the best I can. Let me know what you think.

Thanks!

 

Matt

[Paul]

When fading from a movement effect to a static position there are 2 options:

 

- Fade to effect 'None'. Frog Reference 5394, implemented in version 10.4, stops the unnecessary synchronising of movement effects in this case, however as you've noticed you can get some odd results from the effect fading through Figure8 -> Tri -> Quad -> Ellipse -> None.

 

- Fade to the same effect but with Size X & Size Y set to zero (leave Effect, Speed, Rotation, Offset the same). The desk will synchronise all fixtures in the effect, however this might give a smoother result than the option above. Try it and see.

 

I've logged this for consideration in a future update:

Frog Reference 5598 - Remove unnecessary synchronisations of movement effects (e.g. if Size X & Size Y are zero, or if Fixtures + Effect + Offsets are unchanged).

 

The LTP Fade time on a submaster applies when going from another source to that submaster. Once the LTP channel's source is that submaster, the time is no longer relevant. Lowering the submaster fader simply freezes a chase on that submaster, restarting the chase at step1 when the submaster fader is raised again. Since this doesn't affect the source for any LTP channels, the LTP Fade time isn't relevant. To use the LTP Fade time when raising a submaster, you need to change the source - one way to do this is to transfer the same chase onto 2 adjacent submasters and then use them alternately.