Hi @David_Eames,
Forgive my delayed response - it’s a very long and complicated subject and realistically I probably need to make a whole video about it!
In the meantime, the advice above is good. Here’s a quick fly-past of some top-level guidance.
1. Be realistic about what a single laser can achieve
Take a look at the Liberation logo clip for an example. Notice that it’s actually made from very few lines, and most of them are curved.
Now compare that with writing “Liberation” using a normal text node. It will likely become a much longer frame and start to flicker. That’s because each letter isn’t a single line any more - the whole outline of every letter is traced all the way around.
This is essentially what @StonewolfActual was referring to about tracing.
2. Be very disciplined about the lines in your SVG
If you trace bitmaps you will usually get outlines around every shape. If two shapes touch each other, you will end up with two laser lines along the join - one from each shape.
It’s important to make sure that text, circles, rounded rectangles etc are converted to shapes before exporting. Manual line drawing is often the best approach.
You might also find this section of the manual helpful:
3. Laser tuning matters more with graphics
When displaying graphics, scanner tuning becomes more critical.
If you see tails, you will need to adjust the scanner sync. If you can’t remove them completely, you can either adjust the render settings (be careful though - incorrect settings can damage scanners) - in particular adding more blank points at the start or end can reduce the tails, or increase the point rate in the laser’s Advanced settings to give you more resolution to finely tune out the tails. See Laser output settings panel | Liberation User Manual
In recent versions of Liberation this increases the temporal resolution of the scanners.
Note that since 1.0.3 the point rate setting does not change the actual speed of the scanners. I realise this can be confusing at first, but remember that Liberation generates the point stream in real time, so it can compensate for the actual scanner motion.
4. If you’d rather avoid deep tuning
If you’d prefer not to adjust advanced settings, just keep graphics simple and experiment with the scanner presets (for example Fast, Graphics, etc) or slightly adjust the scan speed.
5. More lasers is often the better solution
It’s usually better to add more lasers than to push scanners harder.
For example, four 30kpps lasers will often look brighter and cleaner than two 60kpps lasers, and may even cost less overall. You can use the canvas system in Liberation to spread content across multiple lasers.
Finally, it’s worth noting that traditional guidelines like “500 points per frame” don’t really apply any more, because Liberation doesn’t work with fixed point frames in the traditional sense.
I hope this helps give a rough overview. I still plan to record a video about this soon - it’s a complex topic and much easier to demonstrate than describe, and it requires some practice and experimentation to get it right.
All the best,
Seb
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