Virtual Intensity for fixtures

[JGG]

Hi all. Have just discovered QLC+ and am loving it. It's really good to see such an active community contributing to the project.

I would like to suggest a new feature whereby any fixture (with various colour channels) that doesn't have an actual overall intensity channel receives a virtual intensity channel when the fixture is instantiated in QLC+. DMXControl3 has this feature which is very useful. There are other posts which suggest benefits for a range RGB fixture users.

I've only taken a quick look at the code but it looks like it would only require a few changes to fixture.cpp class to get this working. The virtual intensity percentage would multiply with the other colour channels to generated actual DMX value outputs. Seeing as QLC+ already handles a real intensity channel for some fixtures the changes will be generally limited to the fixture class. This might mean that a new circular colour space picker with intensity slider is a better option than the current rectangular colour picker. That way the intensity slider would map directly to the intensity property and it would be easier to choose saturated colours.

The benefit is that you can then consistently set colours independently of fading in and out. This makes it possible to group a range of colour mixing fixtures and get consistent behaviour from them all.

Interested to know what others think.

Regards

[siegmund]

Hey,

I see your point but maybe you can already achieve what you want with a slider acting as submaster: http://www.qlcplus.org/docs/vcslider.html

Regards,
siegmund

[JGG]

Hi Siegmund

Good spot. Am actually already doing as you describe with a submaster, but it would be nice if it worked at a much lower fixture level. This way all functions could benefit from it rather than just at a VC UI level.

JGG

[enbyted2]

Hi,

Actually it is doable right now.

Let's say that you have a fixture that has R, G, B channels and you want to give it also intensity.
Than you can create a frame with 4 sliders:
- 3 in level mode, for each channel
- 1 in submaster mode

Then you can map their inputs to a universe that has it's input set to Loopback. Next you use second universe with output to the same loopback and create fixture in this universe with RGB and intensity channels.

If you have for example a Raspberry pi with DMX in and out you could even make a 'translator' device that adds intensity channels to any fixtures in any conbinations. Even effects and other stuff is possible.

That being said, I see your point, however I don't see a feasible option to implement it in QLC+'s architecture, as each fixture's channel is bound to a physical number (like DMX channel for example). Again, you can achieve the same effect by loopbacking just the submaster slider - then you can use this channel in effects.
I'm not QLC+'s mainterner or developer by any means but I think that because of these points it won't really be added.

Also, please see the example attached

[JGG]

Thanks enbyted2 for taking the time to share this and create the example.

It would be nice to have virtual intensity more elegantly integrated but your approach does achieve exactly what I am looking for.
Quite a lot of setting up on the virtual console for all of my fixtures though!

Much appreciated

JGG

[Tubby]

I'd love to see something like this. I'd suggest something like the level slider that applies a reduction (or limit or maybe a boost) as the very last step before the DMX is sent.

I run into this issue when i program a 2 level board, the higher level starts a collection across all my fixtures, and the lower level allows me to change the scene/function for a group of fixtures. Basically solo frames in a solo frame. While i can add a sub master to the lower level, when anything is called from the higher level the submaster is does not apply. Also if the submaster is set to below 100%, when the submaster is moved the intensity of the controlled functions jump, to follower the submaster.

As it would be possible to have a single channel in multiple sliders i'd all output modifiers are applied together (first reductions/boosts then limits).

[lasch43]

I've been looking around in the repo for a way to implement this as well or even better, hsi, hsl or hsv mode selectable for any rgb. Actually the MSB/LSB even called control byte or finechannel sort of works similar where one software slider/channel controls 2 physical channels, when using virtual intensity you want 4 sw channels controlling 3 hw channels. Been trying to understand how MSB/LSB is done in QLC and gonna try to test something similar.

[TonyR]

I've been looking around in the repo for a way to implement this as well or even better, hsi, hsl or hsv mode selectable for any rgb. Actually the MSB/LSB even called control byte or finechannel sort of works similar where one software slider/channel controls 2 physical channels, when using virtual intensity you want 4 sw channels controlling 3 hw channels. Been trying to understand how MSB/LSB is done in QLC and gonna try to test something similar.

Me too! I'm a complete newbie to the forum (and the DMX), and I'm blown away by everything I've seen so far.

But as a new convert to HSL(A) and website design, I'm looking for a way for a lighting operator to have independent Hue / Saturation / Lightness control, rather than juggling R, G and B for a simple colour change (bumping channels one at a time doesn't look good). I appreciate that HSL is very much a compromise in HTML5, with L especially interacting horrendously with S; I COULD potentially design a UI that did the translation, but it would be so much better to be able to assign a virtual HSL group to each real RGB(W) group in QLC+, so any controllers could be used. Expensive fixtures often have both RGBW AND HSL channel sets, but we don't have such a budget (indroahub.org.au - not for profit). I'll look into the virtual universe / Raspberry Pi options, but I would really prefer something at the control level rather than the DMX data stream level.

Thanks for reading.