RGBScript - color-picker as an editable property?

nedmech · Wed Aug 19, 2015 11:55 pm

Here's my use case: I have a couple multi-zone LED bars I'm using as a wall-wash. We have projection screens with lyrics and moving multi-color backgrounds to either side of the wall. I'm trying to coordinate the colors of the wall-wash with the colors of the projection screen backgrounds (typically 3-5 colors, moving randomly).

Right now, I'm using a clone of the Plasma.js RGBScript with my own sets of colors. The problem is setting up new colors is not something I can expect my basic operators to figure out. I have to edit the script file and restart QLC+ to pick up the changes. It's a bit of trial-and-error process that involves some knowledge of editing the scripts.

What I'd like to do is have an RGBScript that has 3-5 color-picker fields as parameters that can be edited from the GUI. Is it possible to set up a color-picker as a parameter, or am I just going to have to make preset color lists in drop-down menus and live with a fixed palette?

OddSocks · Thu Aug 20, 2015 10:00 am

hi,

This is something I wondered about when writing the script , but at the moment this is not possible. If you use one of the scripts with start and end colours you can use the animation widget on the V.C panel.

nedmech · Thu Aug 20, 2015 2:40 pm

There's two problems with using the start and end colors for my use case. First, it's only two colors, and I am trying to get 3-5 colors. Granted, the blending between the colors kind of gets it close, but not really. Second, the wrap-around from the end back to the start causes a jump in the colors displayed. I'm trying to achieve a smoothly moving color wall-wash and the jump between cycles is distracting.

I guess I'll either end up making preset palette lists or a whole bunch of spin boxes (9-15 total R,G,B for 3-5 colors - not very UI-space-friendly).

nedmech · Fri Aug 21, 2015 2:52 pm

I think I have a working script now - check out the attachement. If anyone would be kind enough to try it out and give me some feedback, I would appreciate it. I will make a pull-request once I get some other eyes on it.

nedmech · Sat Aug 22, 2015 7:00 am

I've done some more cleanup and tweaking of the script, and I'm finding some strange behavior that I can't quite track down. Certain color combinations lead to glitchy jumps in output levels. I've gone back and made a copy of the original plasma.js and just tweaked the preset arrays to match my problem color combinations, and the issues appears there too. It's almost acting like it's ignoring the fade times for certain colors and treating them as hold times instead. But it only happens with certain RGB combinations. I can't tell if it's a glitch in the script or a bug in QLC+. Anyone have any insights?

prutseltje · Sat Aug 22, 2015 10:43 am

I have tested the script on my 15x33 rgb panel, and the color selection is a nice addition!

nedmech · Mon Aug 31, 2015 5:08 am

Just getting back to this now. The color jump glitch ended up being an issue with QLC+, not the script, so I'm glad that got sorted. Now I'm looking for opinions on usability. Short of having an actual color-picker control, I'm liking having the preset palette list boxes, but I'm finding that they are a little limited when trying to match colors to my video backgrounds. I could go two ways with this. I could add more presets to the palette list, or I could break down and make it use RGB values for each color instead of the preset lists. The preset list is going to be limited unless I add so many color options it becomes unusable to scroll through the list. But the option of adding RGB values for 5 colors means a total of 15 values to set instead of just 5 - so it would be more flexible, but take up more screen space and time to set up. I'm leaning toward just adding to my list of preset colors (maybe 32 presets total), but wanted to get some input from other users on this. Thanks!