Wondering if there’s any plan for higher resolution DMX output. Moving lights may span multiple addresses to increase resolution, for example 2 channels to span 16 bit for a larger color space or greater movement precision.
Current DMX node only allows 8 bit outputs on 1 channels, and I haven’t figured a way to increase the resolution by splitting between two channels.
Apart from pan & tilt, there’s no real reason to have any fixture control beyond 8 bits from laser software.
Even RGB at 8 bits = 16.7 million colours.
If fine control of, say, CTO, CTP or gobo shake (as examples from our Ayrton Rivali personalities) is necessary, it makes far more sense to just use a desk.
Best,
Andy Stentiford
Technical Director | Funktioncreep Ltd.
I think I’m struggling a lot - thought everything should be going through a DMX output node but it seems like you can output a laser through the ‘dmx zone’ which gets translated to DMX values, right? I’ll try to figure this out on my own, however I hope we can get some documentation on this soon 
Yes that’s exactly the concept!
I did at least write the overview, I’m working on the rest of this chapter next 
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You’re wonderful! Thanks for the information. Hope I’m not too much of a bother for filing forum posts on stuff that’s still WIP 
@Funktioncreep indeed, my fixture only uses 16 bits for the Yaw and Tilt, but not for color, but it’s a pretty low end one.
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Another quick question - this essentially means one can ‘simulate’/approximate a moving head light in the 3D viewer with a laser, right ?
Ideally in future, I’d like to add basic lighting simulation in the visualiser but yes for now you could use a laser object to do something similar and just not output it to an actual laser! It’s a bit of a hack though 
Seb
I played a tad more with DMX, with two moving heads and two static spotlight. The workflow in place currently is actually pretty smart and allows to create complex stuff from the editor without any specialization for DMX (all with “”“lasers”“”). I’ve also successfully used the ‘offset’ and ‘range’ parameters to constraint my moving head properly for it to make sense.
I have one issue though! My moving head light loves to return home when no clip is enabled - which means that if I want to use a clip, the head first has to slowly go to the position… which ruins the entire clip I’ve designed since it’s done is pretty short burst.
I can think of a few ways to avoid that on my end but they are all pretty tedious. Is it possible to have like a ‘sticky’ option for some DMX channels, where constant signal is applied equal to the previous signal? Or is there something I missed?
Also pretty happy to report that 16bit(2 channels) is much less of a problem than I thought, and the current precision is actually good enough for me.
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The feature on lighting consoles that fixes this is a move-in-black/ pre-positioning type feature. It works with a standard cue list. I totally get what you are after and like your suggestion. My workflow to avoid obvious fixture movement is to do a like a half-beat fade in. Drop your clip on 3rd beat and it’ll should kick in when in place. Hope this helps.
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Ah interesting, I’ll have a think about this. I guess it would be advantageous to leave X and Y wherever they are rather than resetting to 0 when there’s no content?
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Yes, that would be exactly what I’m looking for.
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OK great. it’s too late for the next build but I’ll have a think about how to get that in subsequent updates.
Seb
I’m not sure how one would implement this exactly for live busking. Without applying some form of order to clips, I don’t know how your dmx lights would know what to prepare for. That being said, this feature is definitely an intermediate/professional one. I’d like to type through my understandings of DMX playback. Maybe getting some creative juices flowing…
Almost incomparable to lasers, DMX fixtures have behaviours what I would call mechanical limitations that, without the use of good programming and understanding of such behaviours will result in obvious movement or color/gobo changeups in cases where ultra-clean playback is expected, is amateur looking.
TRACKING is a lighting concept that originated because console memory was so limited, in an effort to save space when recording cues that unchanged data from the previous cue carry on and only new information will be stored in the next cue. A benefit of tracking is that you say you need to modify a position in a cue list, you simply update the position on first cue the position is stored, it will update everywhere that position is in use. You only do it once, not on every cue.
Fader / flash options are abundant on lighting console. Example - fader start your cue list (go off Zero). Turn the fader into a cross-fader, for manual fading on a cue list. Release at bottom - disables all parameters when fader it as the bottom (kind of like what is experienced in Liberation when a clip is disengaged)
Flash buttons can be simply flash, reverse playback, release, etc
I think I’ve spent the most time trying to get my spots to return to a home value that I’ve saved. When clips are released, spots return to what I would call an “absolute home”, which would make the spot always need to pan 90 degrees (or more depending on mix/max range settings), when starting a clip. No matter how I hung or rotated the fixture, I always had to deal with this, this is how I decided to make a delay in brightness at the beginning of every clips. Whether there is a software fix, or it’s because I’m using the cheapest spots on the planet, is TBD.
Both clips are re-posts but at the beginning of this timeline, pre-positioning would have had it locked and loaded with a simple Intensity fade-in. Same @30seconds.
Every clip in this has the short brightness delay added to it. I don’t think you see any transitional color, gobo or position. The quantizing/snapping/ grid in Liberation is simply so f’n awesome and many of these I dropped on the one beat. The delay is almost not noticeable Imho, especially when the dj is killing it. If you dropped it sloppily, prematurely, Liberation would still make it look awesome.
Im not looking for ‘preparation’, if I truly wanted that I would have the clip start earlier as you said. My use case is that my light goes HOME which is usually super far from where it’s (usually) pointed towards in clips (which is up, towards the sky, forward, which is almost always literally the opposite of the home point of my fixture)
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I think having the X/Y values stay where they are rather than go back to zero would solve a lot of problems. Eventually I’ll add a “look ahead” for the timeline clips.
Thanks for the suggestions!
Seb
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