E1.31 used for roofline. PE seems limiting

[Greyfox]

Hello guys and girls.  I have bought 2 E1.31 controllers. Made a mega tree and had some great settings in PE to program it. Worked great neat effects pleased.  This year I have added a second E1.31 for a roof line. But the choices in PE are not great. Have I gone at this incorrectly. I have pro S4. It just seems the programming choices are not great. Should I program with some other program. I find superstar very confusing to use. Honestly have never really got it to work at all.  Just wondering if there were addons for S4 spefic for roof lines coming out in PE. Thanks

 

[bobschm]

There were hints earlier of a major update coming next year. Since LOR is usually closed mouthed about plans, I suspect this is pretty far along or they wouldn't hint.

As for now, PE is a first pass by LOR at producing software for pixel programming. As such it is a bit light on effects and cumbersome to use. But there are quite a few choices already and you can overlay or mix them together. It takes a bit of thought, experimentation and perseverance, but I've been able to get a lot of what I envisioned using PE alone.

For rooflines, I suspect the curtain and meteor effects will be your friend. I also wonder if you can declare your roofline string to be a matrix of one row and 900 columns (or however pixels long the whole thing is). That might open up some strange and wonderful effects.

Try them all and have fun.

[k6ccc]

3 hours ago, Greyfox said:

I find superstar very confusing to use.

SuperStar has a learning curve.  For most of us, there is an A-Ha moment where it will all of a sudden start making sense.  However once learned, SuperStar is amazing.  Far more control then PE has.

 

[Mr. P]

13 minutes ago, k6ccc said:

SuperStar has a learning curve.  For most of us, there is an A-Ha moment where it will all of a sudden start making sense.  However once learned, SuperStar is amazing.  Far more control then PE has.

 

two years now and still waiting on that so called A-HA moment.  

[wbaker4]

I'm waiting for my "YEAH" moment when SS can handle 96 columns!

[lkcubsrule]

It takes a bit of thought, experimentation and perseverance, but I've been able to get a lot of what I envisioned using PE alone.

For rooflines, I suspect the curtain and meteor effects will be your friend. I also wonder if you can declare your roofline string to be a matrix of one row and 900 columns (or however pixels long the whole thing is). That might open up some strange and wonderful effects.

Try them all and have fun.

Agreed. I've been extremely successful this fall, especially on a house with rooflines and windows. Curtain, meteor, and butterfly are my go-to effects.

After I get through setup this November, I hope to put together a library of effects and commands that have enabled success. It requires creativity, but renders some really great effects.

Keep trying - it gets easier!

[sax]

For roofline nothing better than superstar.

import your visualization file.  Find your roofline pixels and play with morphs.

To make life easier, only create a visualization file with your roofline.  Then save that as a superstar visualization by naming it something like superstar roofline.  Yes, it is just a visualization file but now you know which one to chose to import.

when importing choose horizontal and go as wide as one strand of your roofline.  For me I have a strand of 105 as my max.  Then choose how many rows...I use 10 since that is the max autosequence will use.

once imported you will have horizontal rows for your lights.  You can select morphs start and end points in the grid or on the visualization image.  Use floating windows if you have 2 monitors and you can really get down to each pixel.

Morphs, fades....these will be the primary effects to use.  Twinkle, shimmer...all usable with the colors you choose.

Once complete you can export as intensity or legacy file.  I use legacy.

Try to sequence 2 songs with SS.  After that you will understand it.  The hardest thing is to understand that you can't just scroll left or right....you have to move in the 8 second sections....that takes time to adjust to.  Once you find an effect you like you can copy and paste throughout the song....use nudges to make the effect fit your song timings.

Morphs have some cool things you can play with.  Of course there are tails but you can also make the morph start slow and speed up or vice versa.  Trailing colors can change.  Length of tail....head or end also affect how the effect will look.

Fades is simple enough.  A white twinkle blinks random colors of the rainbow.  And purple would twinkle red and blue...this is limiting maybe to some but nice for others.

Lastly, when you morph.  You can not make the morph priority....if you have red lights on and want to morph blue....it will morph red+ blue...and you may or may not see the morph.

Been using superstar since year 2....5 years now...nothing sequences better.  Fast, precise and allows experimenting with different pixels in a flash.  Take the time to program 2 songs and you will have your a-ha moment.

Sax

[Greyfox]

Ok thanks for the info guys.  Will give it a try and see how things turn out. 

 

[sticks4legs]

On 11/14/2016 at 10:44 AM, Mr. P said:

two years now and still waiting on that so called A-HA moment.  

Agreed, I still don't get superstar.

I still find sequence editor gives the most control, it was a time consuming process at the start.  That said...... I used the export tool for effects that was incorporated into other lighting software (nutcracker) once I saw how some of the effects exported, copied, pasted and showed up in sequence editor I found it easier to design my own effects.  There is a learning curve with it but I'm able to do this method without the frustrations I found with superstar.  

Some people love superstar, I just haven't been able to wrap my head around it.