Beizer shapes looks wierd and a wierd "!"

[Snajder]

I have been testing Freestyler on my laptop, not connected to my Moving heads yet.. My MH's are Briteq 250s and I entered all the information in Fixture creator and they all work fine with everything except the Beizer shapes..

If I select the circle it moves in a figure eight, if I choose eight it moves in a eight but makes double rings sometimes. the rectangle is more like an cross, etc. is there something I need to change?

Edit: Also tested with the I-move 250s fixture which was premade, same result. When I tried the American DJ accuscan or what ever it was, it was fine..

Also, sometimes I've seen an "!" next to the dimmer bar on the right hand side of the screen and also in the menubar and it says "release all", what does this mean?

[LJ_krede.dk]

If I select the circle it moves in a figure eight, if I choose eight it moves in a eight but makes double rings sometimes. the rectangle is more like an cross, etc. is there something I need to change?

It sound like that Freestyler works correctly. its a bit hard to explain. the "xy-plot" in the pan/tilt window is not the plot for where the light beam will point, but its the pan and tilt DMX-values. when the tilt value for a moving head is going from a value above 127 to on under 127 the head will point to the other side (behind the Moving head). thats why the recangle shape dont give you a rectangle for the light beam.. I hope you see what i mean

Edit: Also tested with the I-move 250s fixture which was premade, same result. When I tried the American DJ accuscan or what ever it was, it was fine..

that is beacuse a scanner is working differently than a moving head. again it is hard to explain. when the tilt value change from above to under 127 it would still point to the same side..

I cant explain it more simple.. if i get into details it would get too complex to understand.. maybe someone else can explain it better than me?

Also, sometimes I've seen an "!" next to the dimmer bar on the right hand side of the screen and also in the menubar and it says "release all", what does this mean?

When you run a sequence from the cue window or the submasters, and change the values manually for a fixture, freestyler notifies you have changed the value, and it is not controlled by the sequence any more by showing the !-button for the specific fixture and channel.. when you push the button the channel will be controlled by the sequence again. the release all button do this for all channels and fixtures.

[Snajder]

I think I understand the beizer shape thing now.. is there any way to make a shape like a rectangle with Moving heads?

[LJ_krede.dk]

I hope that explains it a bit better and make it easier to understand.

a much better explanation than mine, thank you Onge.

[Snajder]

Okey, just as I guessed. Thank you for good explanations!

[djmt99]

I hate to dig up an old thread, but I too am encountering this and am testing with the virtual interface. My main concern is if the "live" physical fixture will actually produce a circle or a rectangle.

[jdmyers]

You can get most shapes to work right but they may require some scaling and/or adjustments to the shapes to actually fit the way your fixture moves.

It will all depend on (among other things):

* how fast your fixture can move (can it keep up with the speed you are sending data to it); (see next tip)
* how fast you set your sequences/shapes/cues to run (are the points farther and/or faster than your fixture can handle); (see previous tip)
* the amount of movement your fixture can accomplish (scanners usually can do something like a 120 deg x 120 deg pan/tilt, while a moving head can typically do something like 560 deg x 270 deg pan/tilt);
* whether your fixture operates as 8 bit (1 DMX channel, 256 positions) or 16 bit (2 DMX channels, 65536 positions) per axis, giving you a low or high resolution movement (more points in between = smoother moves as long as speed is within limits)

So for an example of just using the square shape, it might work perfectly fine on a scanner with a mirror that moves proportionally with 8-bit movement (0,0 to 255,255 on the grid = -60 to +60 degrees of movement X/Y, but that same pattern used on a MH fixture at 16 bits will want to move from 0,0 to 65535,65535, but will move non-proportionately, with -280 to +280 on pan and -135 to +135 on tilt, so your "square" will need to be scaled down and possibly re-drawn in some way as to make the circularly rotating head seem to move in a square.

Likewise with the circle - there are 360 degrees in a circle. The reason you end up with a figure 8 pattern is that the 360 degrees is "scaled" to 560 degrees so will actually go through almost 2 circles in the pan direction while not quite going through a whole circle in the tilt direction (due to the physical limits of the machines and motor stops, etc.) So you'll have to re-shape / scale that circle to make your light move in an "actual" circle...

Luckily the shapes editor lets you draw, size, scale, rotate, flip/flop, and save your own shapes, so you can create custom shapes to make different fixture moves look the "same" in movement.

[hcornea]

Thanks for the explanations here. I had assumed this might be a problem with my fixture setup.

Can't help but wonder, given the 'range' parameter on the fixture creator, could there be an option to scale the bezier shape to the range of dmx values? Given the number of users who already have this working as they want, this would need to be an option.

I know, sort of a feature request. Sorry about that.

If i'm reading this right, I need to compress the x axis and move the shape left to make my 540degree moving head happy. So a circle will be a vertically elongated oval, moved slight to the left. Would be a great feature if the software could do that.

[spud1511]

The quickest and easiest way I use to approximate this is to not cross the horizontal centre line in the shape editor when using moving heads. By sticking in the bottom half only, the tilt does not go upside down (past upright position) and invert half of the shape your drawing.
Better still, only using the middle third of the editors width within that bottom half will keep you within a similar pan range (say 180 degrees for a average moving head) to that of a scanner with a wide pan range.

[hcornea]

Great Tip. Thankyou.

Of course, in an ideal situation the one bezier shape could be applied across a variety of fixtures and produce the same shape, without tweaking. In the meantime this is great information for us newcomers.

Does FS use the info in the 'range' parameter for anything?