Smooth Effects

[forddieseldean]

I have a 12 ccr Mega tree with a 6 channel star visualized along with 7 dumb rgb wreaths and 4 dumb rgb garland. I have everything spaced out so that everything is grouped the way i want it. When i go to do a shockwave, fan or spiral on the mega tree only it also goes over to the garland and wreaths but i dont have them associated or green lined together or anything am i missing something or is it just the way smooth effects are?

[k6ccc]

The smooth effects don't have a limit as to which lights they light.  If you look at the effect on the green grid you will likely see that it will spread well beyond the 12 string tree.  I discussed this with Brian some while back, and he confirmed that if the dimensions of the effect go beyond the 12 string tree, the effect will "spill over" to other elements.  I suggested that he add the ability to put a limit to the edge of the effect.

 

There are a couple work arounds.

 

Reduce the size of the effect - however this frequently results in the effect not looking the way it is desired.

 

Clean it up in Sequence Editor after exporting the sequence.  This is easy if you want the adversely affected elements to be dark at that time.  May or may not be easy if they are supposed to be lit - depending on the complexity of the desired lit state.

 

Live with it (or even enhance it).  Let me give an example.  I have purchased several sequences from Brian that had smooth effects that substantially spilled over to other parts of my display.  In some cases I found that although it was an unplanned spillover, it looked really cool.  On my display the green grid in SuperStar has the 12 string tree as the bottom 12 rows and my 6 CCP arches right above them.  Therefore, most of the spillover in smooth effects spills onto the arches.  A few go well beyond the arches.  I was most recently sequencing Mannheim Steamroller's Deck the Halls.  A LOT of the smooth effects spilled over onto one or more of the arches.  In several cases, I took the first arch (the one with the most spillover) and copied it to the other five arches.  This way all six arches were doing the same thing and it looked really cool.  It was an easy solution to the "problem".  In some other parts, the better solution was to delete the spillover.  Both of these tweeks were made in Sequence Editor after the file was exported from SuperStar.

 

In a couple cases, I have made the smooth effect even larger so that it spilled over a larger portion (or all) of my display.

 

With that all said, I do hope that Brian will add an option to limit a particular smooth effect so a user definable area.  BTW, that option would need to be definable on a per effect basis.

Edited December 19, 2014 by k6ccc

[forddieseldean]

Thanks so much I was wondering about that I like the effect it has but I was just curious if an option existed, i didn't want to find it 6 months from now after i sequenced everything