Awsome 3d lighting program

mbandgeek

Active Member
GrandMA onPC and 3D together are pretty sweet. And free.
 
ACTUALLY, CAN I PLEASE TAKE THIS OPPORTUNITY TO ASK A QUESTION THAT HAS BEEN BUGGING ME.

On every major computer-based console, there's always a "download" link. Download our software! Woohoo! Newest version! Don't need to pay or anything!

Does this mean you can download their software for free, and then run it, with the company making its money by selling you its DMX/Ethernet dongle so that you can actually use their software to actually control actual lights? Or am I simply confused?
 
DarSax said:
Does this mean you can download their software for free, and then run it, with the company making its money by selling you its DMX/Ethernet dongle so that you can actually use their software to actually control actual lights? Or am I simply confused?

That's usually the gimmick. I don't see the use of one of these programs for setting up and programming intels ahead of time if you don't have the mover desk to go with it.
 
hey i have been using this program for ages and have seen it devolp it has come along way since i first downloaded it some new features

draging lighting and objects

better colour palatte

MORE LIGHTING (not just chavert lighting either)

orgainaly it was called sweetlight control (you will notice when you download it the pop up stems from sweetlight.com)
 
bdesmond said:
That's usually the gimmick. I don't see the use of one of these programs for setting up and programming intels ahead of time if you don't have the mover desk to go with it.
Well I just mean, for the purposes of learning a board/getting aquainted with the software. It'd be kinda worthless to do it, as you say, without any way to actually control the lights.
 
bdesmond said:
That's usually the gimmick. I don't see the use of one of these programs for setting up and programming intels ahead of time if you don't have the mover desk to go with it.

well it is still really fun to play with
 
DarSax said:
ACTUALLY, CAN I PLEASE TAKE THIS OPPORTUNITY TO ASK A QUESTION THAT HAS BEEN BUGGING ME.

On every major computer-based console, there's always a "download" link. Download our software! Woohoo! Newest version! Don't need to pay or anything!

Does this mean you can download their software for free, and then run it, with the company making its money by selling you its DMX/Ethernet dongle so that you can actually use their software to actually control actual lights? Or am I simply confused?

this is my take on this.

if i was the company and if someone was shopping around for a computer lighting system, i would let people have the program. mainly because you want to have your best version out to have the consumer compare against other companies. i wouldn't trust a demo that has only half of the features
 
DarSax said:
Well I just mean, for the purposes of learning a board/getting aquainted with the software. It'd be kinda worthless to do it, as you say, without any way to actually control the lights.

I don't know if it is completely worthless. We've had a number of users who started with our download and a Capture or ESP demo primarily to try things and show them to potential clients. Only after they had used us this way for awhile did they buy an adapter and skip the step of renting a desk and recreating the looks from scratch when the gigs came through.

I've personally tried using visualization for testing rig ideas, but don't find it all that useful for actual cueing. None of the visualizers (even serious investments like MSD and WYSIWYG) really simulate all the features of most fixtures and my best looks are almost always inspired by something I see during the process of cueing up the more obvious ones. Also, I'm pretty anal about exact positioning, focus, and intensities. So I have to tweak any scene created on a visualizer anyway. For me, there isn't much time savings between touching up and creating from scratch.

-jjf
 
jfitzpat said:
I've personally tried using visualization for testing rig ideas, but don't find it all that useful for actual cueing. None of the visualizers (even serious investments like MSD and WYSIWYG) really simulate all the features of most fixtures

-jjf

Agreed. (Scary that's happening lately, isn't it?). The only way to get a truly accurate visualization is to design in vectorworks and export it to Vision. Not cheap to do because Vision isn't cheap, plus it needs a monster of a pc with a state of the art video card to work.

Some advantages of the current pc/dmx paradigm are that it allows one to try before buying, and if you can rent a dongle, you don't need to worry about a long rental. Just do 90% in the visualizer and worry about stuff like focus on show day.
 
ok so this program is that only for moving lights or can it be for reg. lights as well ?
 
It'll do any light that accepts dmx. Most of the pc based programs have a profile for a generic dimmer. Some have multi-channel dimmers, others make you assign each dimmer to a channel individually. For example, in LightJockey you can assign a 1 channel, or an even channel dimmer packs up to 32 channels. It's possible to create an odd numbered channel profile, but it's probably more work than it's worth. If you have a hard time finding the profile, try checking the help file, or go to the mfg. website and see if there is a user forum.
 
You can pre-patch a show, do palletes, create views, set-up networks.
As for 'real' visualization, I think ESP is the best software out there. I'm excited we just bought 4 universes of it.
 
Another BIG reason you can download their software is to edit/pre-program a show. If you're lucky enough to have access to Hog PC III (High End Systems) you can use a wireless network with a tablet PC as an RFU (Remote Focus Unit). And yet another reason to have this software on your computer is to set-up a blank show with all of your Palettes the way you like it (i.e. I know all my favorite colors will be 1-6, I know I like to have a Fly-Out Palette Position, etc... figuring out what you want and labeling them will save you a ton of time)
 
Hey Andrew,

Saw some stuff going to you from Windy City Music when I was in the shop the other day. Did you get it yet?
 
Yep, those Color FX's came in two days ago. Dance season has emptied out our warehouse so thanks for helping us with our cross-renting needs.
 

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