Planning a show with half the rig?

[samjamable]

hi

I am preparing for a show and only have half the gear with me to work on at the work shop. I dont have space to setup the structure for the lights. But have space to setup EXACTLY half the lights and structure.

Any tips on how to program for the full show and gear and on the day make adjustments for the rest of the lights and venue?

Working on a Tiger Touch with software version 7.

thanks
Sam

[Olie]

I would make sure you have an odd and even number of each fixture type. This should allow you to program all your palettes. You can create holding position palettes which you update when you get the full rig.

Possibly better though would be to invest in a visualizer that supports ArtNet in. Something like Capture Polar is fairly inexpensive.

[niclights]

I would say there is probably not much difference between having no rig and half the rig. Unless you have the luxury of everything in place the usual method is, as Olie says, to create palettes and build cues almost exclusively from them, ideally with the help of a visualiser. Even if you can't afford something like Capture then the built-in Avo Vis will give you the essentials.

Your big advantage will be having at least one physical fixture of each type. This will allow you to be more accurate in your pre-programmed palettes, particularly for things like colour mixing, gobo choice, strobe speeds, rotation speeds and fixture control channel settings such as pan/tilt speed etc. Crucially you can also check that pan/tilt movements respond correctly in your visualiser and, if they don't, either fix it somehow at the visualisation end or by using inverts on the fixture. This will mean that you can make reasonable guesses with any position palettes offline which, subsequently, will make it easier on site.

[samjamable]

thanks all, the infor is great.

Unfortunately cant have all the fixtures but not working with 1000 fixtures either. So i am hoping it will i can create enough palettes and program so i can do little changes on setup day before the gig.

12x 300 Led Beam
12x 100 Led Wash
24x LedForce4
8x Parnels
2x Profile Spots

Height - 4m
Width - 4m
Length - 8m

The setup is half of all that is setup at the moment.

I haven't run a big show that's why i would like to have some practice with something.
i did attempt the visualiser but building the whole setup in it would just take to long.

- I wanted to ask about Parked fixture. would that help and how would they work?
- can I copy programming from one fixture to another?

[niclights]

You can indeed copy fixtures which will copy all the associated programming. You can also use shared palettes for things like colour.

However I would still urge you to use visualisation and program the show complete, even if it is in combination with the real fixtures. You could create a theatre faster than it would take to set that lot up, even if it is just half of it.
By all means use the real fixtures to understand what things will look like, how the fixtures behave and to get colour palettes nailed down. But getting everything programmed in advance will be invaluable.
All you really need to see in the visualisation is which fixtures are on and when, what colour they are in and a rough idea of positions. You should then only need to adjust positional palettes and positional shapes on site.

I have pre-programmed much larger shows using only the Avo Vis. Even with the best crews and preparation a surprising amount of time is lost on site rigging, problem solving and dealing with the multitude of other real-world complications that can arise. Just making adjustments to positional focus (including manually focussing generics) can take up all your time. I would not fancy going in with only half the fixtures programmed and trying to use copy fixture. It sounds like you have the luxury of a whole extra day but I would still play it as safe as possible!

[samjamable]

ok. so visualiser seems to be my best bet at this stage.

Can i get a visualiser version so i can build the rig at home?

is there a way to backup/copy my show on my notebook with visualiser and import the visualiser into the avo tiger touch and carry on with programming?

thanks

[niclights]

The Avolites Visualiser can run as stand-alone but as it's built-in to Titan there's no real reason to do that. Titan showfiles embed Visualiser theatres within them and are compatible across the range. So you can easily work on and transfer shows complete with theatres from a PC running Titan Simulator (or Titan One) and a Tiger Touch and vice-versa. Additionally, the Avo Visualiser can automatically patch fixtures from your show. Don't forget that you can add an extra display to both the PC and Tiger Touch to increase workspace.

If you have access to a 3rd-party visualiser such as Capture then you can communicate via Art-Net, either on the same PC in combination with Titan Simulator/Titan One or with your Tiger Touch over a network.