White Twinkle

[dougd]

How has anyone achieved the best white twinkle using SS. If you twinkle white it actually twinkles all colors. I want it to be all white. I know I can use shimmer but it just doesn't look as good as twinkle. I have tried a few things but just cant get that twinkle look. Just curious what anyone else has tried.

[BrianBruderer]

Twinkle and shimmer are special commands that are sent to the hardware, and the hardware does twinkle and shimmer when played to your actual lights.

When you play twinkle and shimmer to the computer screen in superstar, superstar simulates on the computer screen what shimmer and twinkle will look like on your actual lights.

In other words, the way shimmer and twinkle behave is determined by the hardware, not the software. I could change how superstar plays shimmer and twinkle to the computer screen but it would not change how shimmer and twinkle behave on the actual lights. On the actual lights twinkle will turn each channel off and on randomly and as you indicate on RGB lights you end up with a multi-color twinkle.

On the actual lights, shimmer will turn all channels on and off simultaneously and if you do that with white, you end up with a white shimmer.

[dougd]

Yeah, I am referring to how they appear on the lights. When you do a white twinkle on pixels you get the lights twinkling all the colors. Wish there was a way to twinkle white on pixels but only get white. Just thought maybe someone had come up with a better way to simulate white twinkle.

 

Edited March 2, 2016 by dougd

[Santas Helper]

There is a way to at least get the white twinkle, manually input all three colors at the same time in a very small block of time randomly in the sequence.

[jstorms]

Shimmer and twinkle are actually functions of the LOR firmware on the controllers themselves. LOR says do a twinkle or a shimmer and the hardware fills in the rest.

Your issue is that when you're programming twinkle (randomly turn on and off) the LOR software applies this on a per channel basis. So when you have a RGB channel group it randomly turns on red, blue and green and you get that throwup color look. Currently, the only way I know around it is to manually program your own twinkle sequence at that point.

I wrote a script that converts the twinkle to actual sequenced information. However; on a RGB channel it won't synchronize it across the channels.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B95M-4jUDX5aeVl6VXJfTkpPVzA

 

 

[George Simmons]

I would recommend manually programming your own random white twinkle for about 7 seconds in length.  Then, save that in an animation file so you can copy/paste as needed.

When you use it, if you're wanting it for longer than the length of your animation file, choose 2-3 seconds randomly and copy/paste to the end.  Rinse and repeat as needed.  Just make sure your original file is random enough so there's no chance someone can easily detect a pattern.

[dougd]

I have done that in the sequence editor. This year I am attempting SS and really enjoying sequencing my whole display with it. I have been able to do 100 percent of the sequencing in SS. The sequence I am working on I wanted to do quite a bit of white twinkle to support what was going on with the mega trees.

[B.Y.R.G.]

I agree with dougd as there should be a white twinkle option in SS.  The way it works now for RGB is useless.  Pixel Editor has it......so what's up?

[BrianBruderer]

Currently you can do a white twinkle using a series of scenes or images where you turn on the desired white pixels. At this time I do not have plans for a "white twinkle" effect.

[Ron Boyd]

Doug, will this work?

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/iurm1yui73ie1t9/AAAgBXQkr9GGTK9WkWFZajm5a?dl=0

[dougd]

Thanks Ron, that look is much better than shimmer in my opinion. I am actually trying to do the effect on the whole yard. I sat here and made a series of scenes and used the move pixel option to make each scene change. It turned out OK, not quite as good a true twinkle but better than shimmer. 

[Ron Boyd]

Agreed. That's exactly how I did it. With the move option.

[BrianBruderer]

I got to thinking about this. If I were to add a feature, I think the way to do it is to keep the standard Shimmer and Twinkle and then add a "Software Shimmer" that would have a speed setting from 1-10. 

[dougd]

That would be awesome Brian. Hopefully you mean a "Software Twinkle".

[BrianBruderer]

Maybe "Software Twinkle" would be a better term for it. The point is that the pixels would randomly go on and off using the color you have set and the speed at which they randomly go on and off would be settable.

[saxon]

4 hours ago, Ron Boyd said:

Agreed. That's exactly how I did it. With the move option.

same here. Works ok. In a pinch. 

 

1 hour ago, BrianBruderer said:

Maybe "Software Twinkle" would be a better term for it. The point is that the pixels would randomly go on and off using the color you have set and the speed at which they randomly go on and off would be settable.

Now we're getting somewhere! Then you could twinkle any singular color instead of the mix. I like this idea. 

[dougd]

This will be very good. Would be able to twinkle cyan and not get flashes of blue and green. Thanks Brian.

[BrianBruderer]

yes

[k6ccc]

That would be great Brian!

 

[Ron Boyd]

8 hours ago, BrianBruderer said:

Maybe "Software Twinkle" would be a better term for it. The point is that the pixels would randomly go on and off using the color you have set and the speed at which they randomly go on and off would be settable.

Been wanting something like this for a long time, to be a user speed setting. Awesome Brian. Thank you.