Understanding Effect Waveforms

[Lufferov]

I'm struggling to get to grips with the Effect Waveforms with my RGB fixtures. I've been trying to make a smooth fade across the RGB spectrum, so starting at Red fading through to Yellow into Green to Cyan then into Blue and finally Magenta before fading back to Red and moving evenly across all the colours in between. I don't want it to stop at any point in the cycle and I don't want it to dip to black... just a consistent colour fade that goes round and round.

 

How do I achieve this with the Effect Waveform generator?

 

If I set Red, Green and Blue to Sine then they all follow the same path so I get fade to White, then out etc... Logically I think I need to offset the Sine wave, but the options are Sine, Sine 180, Sine 270. This doesn't seem to make sense since if I offset Green by 180 it's doing the opposite curve to Red, if I set then set Blue to Sine 270 they are all out of sync so it never does the cycle I'm looking for. It feels like I need to set the Sine to 120 for Green and 240 for Blue but those aren't options....

 

Is my understanding of how this works wrong? I feel like I need a tutorial on how this feature is implemented. Most colour fixtures are either RGB or CMY with an increasing number of RGBA/RGBW etc... So I don't understand why the 120/240 offsets for the Function don't exist.

 

The Step function is the same, it's 0/90/180/270... again divided into 4. So how does this work with fixtures that use three colour attributes?

 

[Jon Hole]

Hi,

 

We're in the middle of designing a user interface that will make this all much easier!

 

Instead of using the different waveforms (+90, +180 etc), instead use the "Offset" column which allows you to set the same waveform / function across each colour parameter, and then offset each parameter compared to each other.

 

[kgallen]

I'm just trying Jon's waveform above with a RGBAW fixture... (I realise only RGB is used).

 

So it mostly works but I get a fade to black between green and blue, as in fade up to blue-fade into red-fade into green-fade to black- then back to fade up to blue. Where did the fade to black come from? Using the 0/33/66 offset it surely should fade green into blue. Hence I see magenta and yellow but not cyan.

 

I changed the sine on all to step and I get blue-magenta-brief flash of white then yellow-green-short off-back to blue. This can't be right! All steps do change duration with speed but the brief white and short off aren't as long as the 'correct' colour steps.

 

Using 7.9.1RC on FLX.

 

Kevin

[Jon Hole]

Weird... should be fine. Can you drop us a show file please Kevin?

[kgallen]

Hi Jon,

 

It wasn't in a cue stack I was just playing with it as per your screen shots (from a fresh install of 7.9.1RC, patch one RGBAW fixture and have a fiddle).

 

However I'll try and get round to doing the same but capturing as cues and seeing if that changes anything and get you a showfile.

 

Regards,

Kevin

[Jon Hole]

It wasn't in a cue stack I was just playing with it

 

Ah ok, on the current effects engine, as you play around with individual parameters, changing the size and the speed, they can become out of sync with each other. To solve this, either record it somewhere and play it back, or enter and exit blind mode, which re-syncs everything

[kgallen]

I was working through the 7.9.1 User Manual recently released and thought I'd give the effects engine another try with some RGBW/RGBAW LED fixtures, from a fresh install of 7.9.1.

 

I triggered the Effects window "Auto generate palettes" and was playing with the Step-On Red palette.

 

Playing with this "live". I got the red come on, then it went blue then magenta then back to red which faded out.

 

I looked in the DMX output window and the red was at 128, then the blue came on at 68 then went to 1. The intensity channel was doing the step on then fade out as expected.

 

 

enter and exit blind mode, which re-syncs everything

Nope, didn't solve it, no change (I used Shift+Z to enter Blind, then Z to exit).

 

 

To solve this, either record it somewhere and play it back

Nope, didn't solve it either. In fact made it worse. I recorded to PB1 then Cleared down the programmer. Then pushed up PB1 fader. Effect started but the garbage states (blue, magenta) were even more pronounced.

 

I'm going to try again now, but I'm sorry my conclusions so far from various playing with RGB fixtures and the Effects engine is that it is unusable and not fit for purpose. As from my posts in various threads where I've tried to get something sensible out of it, I've not managed to achieve anything that behaves as documented and that would be vaguely useful or usable in a show

 

I'm glad you're rewriting it, the current one just doesn't work on FLX.

 

Kevin

[jw-lighting]

As from my posts in various threads where I've tried to get something sensible out of it, I've not managed to achieve anything that behaves as documented and that would be vaguely useful or usable in a show

 

Hi Kevin,

 

I have the same problems and experience with the effect engine, your reply is very helpful, because I havn't got the time to work through the manual and the tips here and try everything out. Now I could assume that it is not my fault.

 

 

I'm glad you're rewriting it, the current one just doesn't work on FLX.

 

Yes - and I hope it does not took ages. But I knew it's not a simple task and should be done carefully.

 

Jan