How to do nice effects with Sunstrips

[luciolis]

Hello everyone !

I was wondering if there was a special magic trick for creating original effects with sunstrips. I currently use dimmer shapes but it inevitably ends with the same effect (blocks of lights moving from left to right). I saw in MA's effect generator more random shapes, and with Titan I usually end (painfully) making chases lamp-by-lamp.
Does someone want to share his/her technique ?

Many thanks,
Adrian

[icke_siegen]

What version of Titan are you using? How do you patch the sunstrips? As single dimmers, or as multicell fixtures?

I'd say that's a call for the FX engine/pixelmapper. It's covered in length in the manual; here are the steps in a brief:
- create a group out of the Sunstrips
- arrange the sunstrips, using Pixelmapper/Layout Editor
- not, call Pixel,mapper/Effect Editor, and create your FX.

There are other approches, e.g. using Mode 2 and Fixture Overlap, like in this video.

[niclights]

I have used chases, shapes and pixelmap effects for this kind of thing. They all have their advantages and disadvantages.

Chases for example, while programming is difficult and can be limiting, you do have easy access to speed, including tap tempo and crossfade and can randomise at the push of a button. I use them for the random option mostly. To make creation easier you can setup a macro that is [next (fix+1), @full, append step, @0]. You can them quickly make various chases simply by setting up different selection patterns/fixture orders and then fire the macro x times.

Utilising pixel map masters and speed masters you can get impressive on-the-fly control of pixelmap effects too. For example, assigning a pixelmap effect playback to a bpm master will allow you fade your effect on the playback while keeping speed separate, along with providing the ability to tap tempo. Additionally, switching one or more layers to pixelmap masters will give you live control of a number of parameters. One problem with effects at the moment is the animations do not fade between cells causing them to snap on or off. One way to make them smoother is to import a gradient fill bitmap and use that as your element. There are some tutorials in the manual that I wrote that may be of some use, particularly how to create 'random' looking effects in pixel maps.

Shapes are natively very good at smooth fades. The trick to creating more interesting shapes is the combination of shape fixture order and spread. Try adjusting the fixture order from within shape generator and don't forget you can have duplicate numbers in the order, for example 1,2,3,4,4,3,2,1 etc.