Design Palette Color Picker and RGB Cycloramas

[LXPlot]

Okay, so I was at a conference this weekend, and decided that rather than see an amateur production of To Kill A Mockingbird, I would go to some workshops. Luckily for me, one of them was very involved in using automated fixtures in the same OS (palette) that I use. It actually turned out to be a lot of review, but one thing that did interest me was the possibility of using the console's color picker tool on RGB cyclorama lights.

Here is what I remember. First, I would need to re-gel the cyclorama lights so that they fit the RGB pattern. Next, I'd need to patch each one into the board as color mixing cycloramas (Possibly LEDs?), and then i could highlight them all and use the color picker to get them to mix automatically.

If anyone could help me here, it would make my day to be able to highlight dimmers and be like "Go! Roscolux 59" and have the already almost correct indigo emanate from my cycs.

Thanks again!

 

[xander]

Yes, you can do this. The only catch is that you have to use 3 sequential dimmers for the 3 cells. Then, patch as a "Generic RGB" fixture or whatever the Palette equivalent is. You have to use sequential dimmers because what you are doing is just treating the three different dimmers as if they are 3 different parameters (attributes in Strand talk) of one fixture. This is an all or nothing kind of deal. You have to actually patch the units as one fixture; you can't just pick three channels at random and say, "color picker, GO!"

I have never actually done this on PaletteOS so someone correct me if I messed something up.

-Tim

 

[shiben]

Yes, you can do this. The only catch is that you have to use 3 sequential dimmers for the 3 cells. Then, patch as a "Generic RGB" fixture or whatever the Palette equivalent is. You have to use sequential dimmers because what you are doing is just treating the three different dimmers as if they are 3 different parameters (attributes in Strand talk) of one fixture. This is an all or nothing kind of deal. You have to actually patch the units as one fixture; you can't just pick three channels at random and say, "color picker, GO!"

I have never actually done this on PaletteOS so someone correct me if I am messed something up.

-Tim

I would imagine you could patch any three dimmers into once channel as different parameters...

However

I personally think this is not a good idea. For one, your colors are never quite what you want. For two, you loose the fun and skill of manual mixing. For three, you are stuck with RGB. While RGB can do great things, I try and do all of my shows with cycs with 3-5 colors for the entire show. So, I can actually choose three colors that I want spot on, and that can mix to my two other colors, and I have a more perfect cyc look. This bit is just personal preference though. I also like the fun of creating colors and tweaking them manualy for that stunning cyc that offsets the dancer perfectly. In addition, I think its a good learning thing to know how you can mix RGB to get colors you want. When you make the color wheel come to life, you understand it more than a silly little rig in a light lab where you point fresnels to get different colors.

 

[AdamHVLS]

Noah,

Thanks for posting this. It was my workshop that you attened. Yes, what everyone else is saying is correct. You are going to patch 3 sequential dimmers in a row to the generic RGB fixture in the library to make this work. You could also do the same with generic RGBW and RGBAW as well. If you have any questions send me a PM and I can help you set this up.

Shiben - I understand your point of view, and I agree that you need to learn to mix by RGB by sight as well, but this will help get close and then you can adjust from there. It is a time saver when you are programming quickly.

Thanks again for attending Noah!

 

[bharrell]

Actually you no longer are required to use sequential dimmers. Once patched in Patch By Fixture, you can go into Patch By Output and adjust as you need. If your fixture is 12 and the first dimmer is 101 and that needs to be blue rather than red. Type [101] [@] [12] [S4-Attribute] [M3-Blue] [ENTER] [ENTER] to confirm.

It's not always the best solution but it is definitely fun especially when you do color effects with it.

Happy Programming.

 

[Footer]

It's not always the best solution but it is definitely fun especially when you do color effects with it.

Happy Programming.

Probably one of the most useful things to do if you go this route. RGB Chases with cyc lights if you have enough dimmers can be fun.

 

[LXPlot]

Hi guys, thanks for all the responses. I was planning on using it for

1: color effects, for concerts and such, as you all mentioned
2: To be able to quickly find a rough value of the color and tweak from there. It would help especially with shows that need large amounts of effects from the cycs.

Okay, I've played around with this for a bit and a few problems/ questions have arised.

One, does every dimmer in the unit need to be a generic RGB, or just the first one? Secondly, what should I put as the attribute value for the dimmers in patch? Finally, assuming that they all should be a generic RGB and have no attribute value, then does anybody have any idea why the color picker might not work?

Thank you!