The Lighting Controller

Hey guys,

I'm a bit of a newbie to this whole lighting game.. Let me quickly explain what I'm doing.

A band I'm working with has 2 sets of 4 parcans (8 in total) and 2 iSolution iMove 250s's.. Now I've animated the parcans perfectly via midi porting, but now it's time for the iMoves.

Now the problem I'm having is, obviously with the parcans you basically have on and off.. no movement.. so they're easy to work out.

When I make a scene in the editor for the iMoves, do I need to make a step where it puts the iMoves into the position I want them to start at? Or do I just make my first step how I want it and hope that the light flicks to that position in time? I hope I'm explaining this so people can understand it.. it's a bit of a head f**ck lol

If I'm not explaining it well, please tell me and I'll try and elaborate.. Many thanks to anyone who helps!

May be you could just try (?)
- build different basic scenes in program Editor.
- load them in program Live
- play them in program Live

If you do not have the fixtures (or if you do not have the dmx interface), 3DView could give you an idea of the real things.

Hey,

Thanks for your reply.

The fixtures are not here at the moment.. I'm building the lightshow, then going to be DMXing it with the actual fixtures once we have bought the hardware.. so I don't have that luxury..

When I use the 3d view it snaps from the off stage to suddenly pointing up in the air and I'm well aware these heads can't move at the speed of light So I'm nervous about creating a whole show, then finding out the heads don't work properly... :/

3DView does effectively not respect the head movement latency.
In order to prevent this latency, you have to:
1. either insert steps before final position, where X/Y channels transition is in "fade" mode, with a duration of something like 0,5 to 1s (3DView will show more realistic movements)
2. or add one (0,5 to 1s) step after each final position (easier). X/Y values must be same as in previous step. This step will act as a "pause" step, waiting the head reaches final position

Thanks again for your reply..

Sorry if I'm being stupid.. but I'm brand new to the lighting game.. So you're saying, in step one fade the light's XY to where I want the light to start and then in step 2 turn the light on?

Yes, for instance (this is point #1).

My plan is to have the heads turn off and point vertically up at the end of each scene.. this means that up will be my "reset" point.. so in every scene I know to animate from the up position.. sound like a good idea to you?

The good point is the average time to go in a specific position is reduced.
If this time is a critical point for you, yes this sounds good.
In that case, you will have to make a one step scene with this X/Y position, which should be always "on" in Live.

Ah that's interesting! I didn't know if it should always be on or not? I didn't know if that would effect the movement once another scene is activated.. So am I right in thinking (if left on) once a new scene is activated it'll override the XY of my "reset" scene and then once that scene is turned off it'll automatically animate back to the "reset" XY?

You can easily check that with 3DView.
Please make some test scenes and try.