change EFX size with fader

[Sidlomydlo]

Hi,

does anybody know how this is done? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRQlbni ... polszewski

My goal is to have my relative EFX running on top of scene and also have option to change its size with fader. So it's not completely the same case, but it should by good starting point to understand this guy's scene.

I am able to create XY pad and control widght and hight with one slider via loopback, but I cant figure out how to create another XY pad which will control position of first pad's range.

Thanks!

[GGGss]

In theory, you could create the 2nd XY pad controlling 2 channels in Loopback and use these to influence the X and Y position?

[MichelSliepenbeek]

The trick is to use two X-Y Pads, one for the EFX's and one for positioning.

To change the size of the working window of the EFX Pad, i used 4 loopback sliders, set them to LTP and used Channel Modifiers 0- 126 and 255 - 128.
(As i'm only allowed to add 3 attachments, i will add those in a following post).
For this example I picked the maximum possible range and put the working window in the centre.
Feel free to change the values, but make sure that you always avoid an overlap (on Virtual Console you cannot make the handles cross, but using External Inputs you can and when they do, you loose control).

I'm aware that it does not look the same, but it does everything.

[MichelSliepenbeek]

And here are the modifiers:

[Sidlomydlo]

In theory, you could create the 2nd XY pad controlling 2 channels in Loopback and use these to influence the X and Y position?

The trick is to use two X-Y Pads, one for the EFX's and one for positioning.

Thanks!

Yes, you guys are both right, I ended with same idea and it works nearly the same.

But when I use second XY-pad to control moving heads pan/tilt channels as Michel suggest, it only works when no other scene with pan/tilt channels is active. As soon as I start EFX with another position scene running in background (I want heads to be in that position before EFX and get back to it after EFX), XY-pad with pan/tilt is not affecting EFX anymore.

That guy somehow managed to use second XY-pad to move parameters on the first one and that should be working also with pan/tilt scene running in background.
It has to be some loopback logic i can't figure out. Looks like these 4 channels controling first XY-pad are affected not only by slider (which change EFX widght/hight), but also by second XY-pad which moves them in same direction and change EFX position, but does not change widght/hight set by slider.

Do you guys have any idea how this is possible?
Thank you very much for your time.

[MichelSliepenbeek]

If you read the on-line manual https://www.qlcplus.org/docs/html_en_EN/vcxypad.html

You will find that X-Y Pad has 3 different usages:
1- Absolute positioning
2- EFX
3- Relative to a Scene

In the example i made i only used options 1 and 2.

As soon as I start EFX with another position scene running in background (I want heads to be in that position before EFX and get back to it after EFX), XY-pad with pan/tilt is not affecting EFX anymore.

If you add a third X-Y pad to your VC and you add your scenes to the Presets of that Pad it will act as "Relative to a Scene".
This is probably what you are looking for.
Notice that in this situation it is not required to add your fixtures to the fixtures Tab of the X-Y Pad (QLC can also retrieve the fixtures from the scenes that are used).

I added this option to my example, as well as a Dummy X-Y pad (uses a Dummy Fixture to control 2 loopback channels that are attached to the External Inputs of the X-Y Pad in "relative to a Scene" Mode.)

MH Test 2.qxw

(32.88 KiB) Downloaded 345 times

Loopback-MHTest.qxi

(1.13 KiB) Downloaded 251 times

Showtec-Kanjo-Wash-RGB.qxf

(4.54 KiB) Downloaded 285 times

The channel modifiers are unchanged, you can use the ones from my previous post.


Finally i noticed that the YouTube video is about 4 years old, so Filip Olszewski must have been on version 4.12.1 or lower when he made this video.
It might just be that there were upgrades on X-Y pads since this version and that this is the reason why we don't get the same results.

[Sidlomydlo]

If you add a third X-Y pad to your VC and you add your scenes to the Presets of that Pad it will act as "Relative to a Scene".
This is probably what you are looking for.

Thank you, that might give results I want. But I have some bug or bad settings in my QLC+. When I use XY-pad in relative to scene mode in your project, only some fixtures are moving (shown in video here: https://we.tl/t-sbaRyUqdzs ).

I also tried to make fresh new project with my moving heads and this mechanism and the problem stays. If there is a fixture 1 in scene that is assigned to XY-pad, it works. If there is fixture 2 in scene, fixture 3 is moving when moving with XY-pad (that´s the wierdest thing). Fixture 2 and 4 never react to XY-pad movement despite being correctly inculded in scene.

In any other part of my project all fixtures work exactly as they should.

Any idea what can cause this error? :/

Thank you very much!

[MichelSliepenbeek]

I found the same bug.

All the fixtures with an odd number (Kanjo .... #01, Kanjo .... #03, Kanjo .... #05 etc) react on "relative to a scene", the ones with an even number (Kanjo .... #02, Kanjo .... #04, Kanjo .... #06 etc) don't.

It becomes even stranger!
I made 2 copies of scene Center and in one (Center Even) i removed all the odd numbered Fixtures and in the other one (Center Odd) i removed all the even numbered Fixtures.
Scene Center Even does not react to "relative to a scene" at all (which was a bit like i expected).
Scene Center Odd however now picked up the same strange behaviour as we saw before: Fixtures 1, 5 and 9 now did react as "relative to a scene" but fixtures 3, 7 and 11 did not.

I made 2 more copies of Scene Center, only this time i did not remove fixtures but unboxed the channels of all the Odd Fixtures in one and unboxed the channels of the Even fixtures in the other one. That gave the same result (as when removing Fixtures).

[Sidlomydlo]

I found the same bug.
All the fixtures with an odd number (Kanjo .... #01, Kanjo .... #03, Kanjo .... #05 etc) react on "relative to a scene", the ones with an even number (Kanjo .... #02, Kanjo .... #04, Kanjo .... #06 etc) don't.

Strenge things happen with relative to scene XY-pad. I've been observing this little bit more.
This is what I found out:

Kanjo #01 is on address 1 and it's working fine, it reacts to XY-pad movement with no problem.

Kanjo #2 is on address 9 and any XY-pad (relative to scene) movement does not control channels 9 and 10 as it should, but controls channels 17 and 18 (pan/tilt channels of next fixture, Knajo #3). So the signal from XY-pad is somehow shifted by 8 channels (one fixture "lenght").

But signal about movement of Kanjo #3 is not shifted by 8, but by 16. So it does not move with Kanjo 4#, but moves with Kanjo #5.

Signals about next fixtures are all shifted by 16 channels (two fixtures). That's creating an ilusion of fixtures with odd numbers moving and fixtures with even numbers not. In fact XY-pad moves with wrong channels. (And yes, this way you can accidentaly e.g. dimm your PAR's by moving XY-pad if they are addressed next to your moving heads).


So your observation was correct, but it has nothing to do with fixtures names or how are they deployed to scenes, but with their DMX adressing.
Sadly the bug (if it is one) has to be even more complicated, cause when I tried to move one fixture on address 50 and second on 58, XY-pad was controlling channels 99 and 100 (+49 channels) and channels 115 and 116 (again +16). Test with other moving heads (11 channels spots) gave me same results. First shift is wierd and then it goes by the rule of 22 channels shift.

For me this is an essential function (which I thought everybody needed) so I'm bit surprised that this bug exist in this version of QLC+. Also I didn't found any solution so far.

[mcallegari]

This should be fixed upstream

[Sidlomydlo]

This should be fixed upstream

Hi Massimo,

thanks for your efforts. I tried version 4.12.8.36 on Windows and unfortunately the bug is still there. So will it be removed in the next version? Is the build with the fix available to test?

Thanks!

[mcallegari]

I need to update test versions. The one you tested does not include the fix
Otherwise if you have a GitHub account you can download the latest automated build

[ShagLight]

How do you get the width and height to adjust from the center in and out? I could only get it to adjust from one side.

[MichelSliepenbeek]

To change the size of the working window of the EFX Pad, i used 4 loopback sliders, set them to LTP and used Channel Modifiers 0- 126 and 255 - 128.

Check the manual: https://docs.qlcplus.org/v4/fixture-man ... properties

[ShagLight]

When using any external control, be it a fader or knob on an external device, to adjust the width (for example) on an x/y pad, it only affects the handle on the right to move it to the left and back.

How do you get an external fader or knob to affect the left handle to get it to move to the right and back?

[GGGss]

Strange - in my test (see annex) I cannot set the width and height through Loopback mechanism.
Can someone confirm, please?

[MichelSliepenbeek]

@ David:
Come on, i post an example to show you how to do it.
If you are willing to have a look at the properties of the VC Slider you will see that it controls 4 Loopback Channels and if you look at the properties of the XY pad you will see that every handle has its own Loopback Channel as External Control.


@Fredje:
To put the XY pad in "EFX mode", you need to add (at least) one EFX to the XY pad and start that.

[GGGss]

@Fredje:
To put the XY pad in "EFX mode", you need to add (at least) one EFX to the XY pad and start that.

An old horse learning its moves again ... THX Michel

[ShagLight]

Strange - in my test (see annex) I cannot set the width and height through Loopback mechanism.
Can someone confirm, please?

I got the slider to work with width and height. You have to set an EFX as a preset and then turn that preset on. And the sliders will then work with the width and height.

And for some reason that I have yet to figure out, when the EFX is turned on, the pan slider works the left width handle and the tilt slider works the top height handle. But when the EFX is turned off, the pan and tilt sliders move the position and the width and height sliders don't work at all.

[MichelSliepenbeek]

Now, we are back to where we started.
If you go to the first post of this thread, you can read:

I am able to create XY pad and control widght and hight with one slider via loopback, but I cant figure out how to create another XY pad which will control position of first pad's range.