The Avolites Discussion Forum

In a tracking cue list the MaskFX persists into the following cues irrespective of the state of the T/B switch.

However If the tracking mode for that cue is set to cue only or solo it works and follows the correct tracking logic but the slider does not disappear from the following cue.

Thanks for your message.

This certainly sounds wrong. I am having trouble repeating it, do you have specific steps or a show file. It is possible it is related to something else in the cue list.

Thanks

Pete

have you got an email address i can send the show files to. it wont let me attach them to a forum post

the way i did it was i had a circle shape running on a group of fixtures which tracks forward into subsequent cues, in the next cue i selected the same group but using the all/odd/even key selected either the odd or even fixtures in that group then created the mask shape and merged it over the top of a cue, it works, it masks the shape on the selected fixtures but it gets stuck like that, when you click the tracking slider over to block it still tracks and the tracking slider doesnt disappear from the following cues for that mask shape.

Feel free to e-mail the showfile to me at peter.bridgman@

Following the steps I couldn't reproduce this, so there may be something interesting about the showfile...

email sent with show file and capture file

Just thought of another little nugget of information in reference to this.

All the cues were recorded in channel mode, in general I tend to only record in fixture mode directly after a block cue. And wherever any extra cue data was merged over the top afterwards the update mode was set to forwards, although i may have updated a cue in cue only mode and then later changed it to forwards. I did do a bit of fiddling with the tracking modes or various cues mainly just to test it all out.

I did not try he MaskFX shape with a block cue

I will start a new show file and see if I can reapeat this.

https://youtu.be/0_NqRBTS5qQ

I've uploaded a video to YouTube. This is a new showfile created in beta 51. Same steps as before, all cues channel mode. The MaskFX shape gets stuck.

Thanks, I got your showfile and am looking into this.

Pete

Okay, so I've looked into this and now understand the behaviour you are describing.

I believe what you are seeing is an artefact of how shape tracking works, given that MaskFX acts like any other shape data for an attribute on a fixture.
For example, if you had a cuelist that looked like this:


In cue 2, the information about the Tilt Saw is *replaced* for fixture 2 by the Tilt Swing. Then when you block the tilt swing in cue 3, the data no longer tracks into that cue, meaning that fixture 2 has no shape in cue 3.

If I understand correctly, the example you are describing is exactly the same, but with Tilt Swing being replaced by Mask FX. The resultant behaviour, and the reasons for it, are the same. In cue 2, fixture 2 has "Mask FX" as its current shape. In cue 3, the "Mask FX" is blocked from tracking, so no shape tracks in. Therefore in cue 3 fixture 2 has no shape.

We're not likely to change how shape tracking works in this regard any time particularly soon, but we do understand the need to be able to get fixtures to rejoin a previously-running shape from earlier in a cuelist [65266], and that the shape tracking interface could be made more intuitive [78526].

To acheive what you are attempting, you could merge the MaskFX into the target cue Cue Only. This will cause the Mask FX to only have effect during those cues, and the fixtures will rejoin the shape after the cue only cues.

There seems to be a related submission in ideas & features (https://www.avolites.com/ideas/cue-list ... vious-cues) - I would recommend voting for this to help us prioritise future development.

Hope this helps, let me know if I've misunderstood anything.

Best,