subs

[dappa]

8O just curious guys, im getting alot of heat off my employees. merely because i'm sure that this is possible. IS it possible to control my robotics fixtures ;eg. P/T Clr using my subfaders? pls let me know thnx dappa.

[K-Nine]

You can program fixture channel data directly onto submasters, or program a memory (scene or chase) and transfer it onto a submaster fader.

 

If you use the desk in partial mode, you can program memory and submaster data down to fixture and attribute level (eg a submaster could just affect the colour, beamshape or position parameters of certain 'tagged' fixtures).

[richard]

Hoever it is worth pointing out that the just works as a 'snap' sub - in that as soon as you raise the sub it will snap the colour to the max level programmed in the state - at the moment you can not fade through the colours along the movement of the sub - although that would be nice!

[K-Nine]

I think I have explained elsewhere in the forums that the submaster fader is responsible for controlling the HTP data on the submaster (ie the generic channels and fixture brightness parameters).

 

The LTP data (fixture colour, beamshape and position parameters) is triggered when the fader passes through the trigger point. The Colour, Beamshape and Position data can be set to snap or fade, and if fade will use the LTP fade time for the memory. I think this only works for memories transferred onto subs at the moment, but this will be extended to data programmed directly onto subs in the next update package

[richard]

That was the point I was making - what a lot of ops like to do is put their gobo wheel/colour wheel on to a sub (or any fader) so that they can just whiz it up and down to change the colour (in an HTP style) - this is what you cannot do on the desk!

[K-Nine]

That was the point I was making - what a lot of ops like to do is put their gobo wheel/colour wheel on to a sub (or any fader) so that they can just whiz it up and down to change the colour (in an HTP style) - this is what you cannot do on the desk!

 

I can see what you are getting at, but I am not sure how we could do this easily, it will require some more thought :?

 

You say "in a HTP style" but presumably the outputs of the fixture parameters such as colours and gobos etc. would still be calculated on an LTP basis as they are elsewhere on the desk (control wheels, playback X, submasters, SX buttons) ?

 

Afterthought: Not exactly the same as using a sub but ... couldn't you just select the fixture(s) you want, select the attribute (eg colour) and then move the control wheel up or down ?

[Kirkup_xp]

You say "in a HTP style" but presumably the outputs of the fixture parameters such as colours and gobos etc. would still be calculated on an LTP basis as they are elsewhere on the desk (control wheels, playback X, submasters, SX buttons) ?

 

The theory is that as you push the fader up, the LTP 'crossfades' at the same time - you can stop 50% of the way up, and the LTP fade stops too.

 

So if you have a fixture at a particular position, as you push the fader up slightly it begins to move towards the defined position saved to the submaster. If you stop moving the sub, it stops moving its position.

 

I assume this is done by calculating the 'distance to change' - say from 23% to 67% on the tilt attribute. Thus the 100% fade on the submaster is broken up to 44 steps.

 

You could make this fit easily into the user interface simply by adding another option to submaster LTP fade - although what you would call it i dont know - Follow would be obvious, but F is already taken. Proportional?

[K-Nine]

But how does the submaster know what the start point is ?

 

The fixture parameter value could have been set last by the playback X, another submaster, sx button, control wheel, palette output etc. 8O

 

Surely, the only way you could do this sensibly would be to scale the programmed value of the fixture parameter in the submaster data along the full travel of the submaster fader.

 

For example, If the submaster data had a colour wheel value of 160 DMX programmed, the output value of the colour wheel cf submaster fader position would be as follows:

 

Submaster @ zero colour wheel value = 0

Submaster @ 10% colour wheel value = 16 (DMX)

Submaster @ 50% colour wheel value = 80 (DMX)

Submaster @ 100% colour wheel value = 160 (DMX)

[richard]

The way that some other desks do it is that they lay the HTP values over the LTP values - which may seem odd so bear with me!!

 

The sub which fades would override any LTP subs/chases on an HTP basis, it would always have a out level of 0 and you would set the upper level as you stated.

 

So, if you had a chase running colours on sub 1, then whenever that chase had a higher output level than your colour fader then the colour will go to that of the chase, however when your colour fader has the highest level it will stay at that..

 

The downsides to using the wheel are many and include:

 

1) The wheel will override any chases etc I think?? - to return it you have to release it in some way (although I can't remember exactly what would happen here so I may be wrong..

 

2) When using a fader you can mark the different colours/gobos along the track, meaning that you can see what it will do..

 

The only thing with this will be that you will need to be able to record these subs at attribute level - as you would only want the one wheel on each sub, although one option would be that as it is HTP, you would just need to set other attributes to zero when recording it (so they would be saved but just would not affect the output..

 

I dunno if this makes sense, but let me know!!

[Kirkup_xp]

That would lead to a snap to 5% of the value when you reached the LTP trigger

 

You would have to find a way of storing the last LTP value as well as the sub value. So the sub would calculate from the current value (regardless of whether its being output on P-X, an SX or manually) to the new value, and divide it up.

 

This is implemented on Pearl's - It's option 2 in the submaster options.

[K-Nine]

I think I'm beginning to follow what you are describing, but whatever method the subs use to calculate the outputs, HTP, LTP or some temporary (?) combination of both (!) it is certainly not a trivial exercise to design, implement and integrate into the current desk software.

 

However, it's certainly a feature we should consider for the next series of desks :wink:

[richard]

It would, I expect be a temporary HTP output, so would treat the data on the sub as a 'held' HTP output (if that makes sense)

 

You would simply be fading the colour value up - ignoring LTP triggers and such, so for example:

 

Sub 1 contains a LTP chase with two steps ony of colour data - step 1 col@DMX128, step 2 col@DMX00

 

Sub 2 contains HTP colour data, with Col@DMX255 (FF)

 

When Sub 1 and Sub 2 are both at 00 - output is not affected

 

When sub 1 is at full, sub 2 is at 0, output is entirely steps from sub 1

 

When sub 1 is at zero and sub 2 is at full, output is col@DMX255

 

when sub 1 is at full and sub 2 is at full, output is still col@DMX255

 

when sub 1 is at full and sub 2 is at 25%, output alternates between col@DMX128 (step1 of chase) and col@DMX63 (level from Sub 2)

 

So, in a way you would have two output areas on the desk, the LTP and the HTP processes, they would then be merged on at HTP basis.

 

The other (maybe simpler) option would be to just make the sub set the output to the relevant level on an LTP basis - so whenever you move the sub the output would snap to that level, independant on whether anything else is running, this would have its uses, so it might be nice to have the option between these two areas - I dunno..

[dappa]

THANKS ALOT GUYS YOUR VIEWS WERE VERY HELPFUL.

 

 

DAPPA