Preview rotation question

[k6ccc]

Here is a question for the group.  I have a very weird shaped front yard.  Almost everything is at some odd angle.  Largely because of that, I have never drawn either my Visualizations not Previews such that they matched my physical layout.  However this year I am adding a particular prop that absolutely must match the physical layout or else it won't work right.  So I have been tweeking my 2020 Christmas preview so that everything matches reality.  I pretty much have everything completed except my arches.  Below are two screen captures of the arches group.  The top one has the group squared off.  The problem is that the left end needs to be pushed back closer to the wall behind it, and the right end needs to pull a little away from the wall.  In reality, the arches are a consistent about 6 feet in front of the white block wall.  In other words, what I need to do is create a vertical axis between arch 3 & 4 and rotate the group around that axis a little bit.  The only way I can find in S5 is to use the rotate handle (the green arrow in the bottom screen capture).  That does move the endpoints as needed, but as you can see, massively distorts the shape of each arch.  If I have no alternative, I can reasonably leave the arches squared as shown in the upper screen capture, but I would prefer to get it right if I can.

Anyone know how I can accomplish what I want?

 

[dgrant]

Hey Jim, I've not seen anything in S5, so far, that allows moving a prop or group of props, in a 3-D environment. I "think" it only supports a 2-D display. You can do it manually, one at a time, by changing each one's size, angle and location to simulate the 3-D effect.

[PhilMassey]

I agree. I think the only thing you can do is to create each arch separately and position them how you want, then recreate the group. That's a lot of work, and may cause unintended side effects.

[PhilMassey]

Thinking about it. Perhaps a Degroup function might be helpful in a case like this.

Degroup the items, move around and regroup.

[default]

Jim,

From what I am understanding from your description is not so much just rotating the arches, but changing the perspective of how they look in S5.

It is not something S5 is currently capable of doing, but there are other ways as shown below, but as Phil says, you would have to re-create the arches. In the S5 picture, I only created one arch and copied it 6 times, (so it really wasn't time consuming or hard to do) I lined them up close to the forced perspective picture.

I also used Bulbs to create the arches as it the only way to get pixels placed at the angle they are.

I left a lot out of this, if you are interested in how I made it into the S5 preview (shown) let me know and I can do a more detailed narrated video for you. I can probably do a Cad type drawing with dots so it would easier to line up the pixels for a cleaner end product.

Food for thought.

Alan...

[k6ccc]

As I understand it, in S5, you recreated each arch as 50 individual bulbs rather than a pre-built arch.  And the only purpose of the PaintShop work was to create a model of the desired shape so you knew what to re-create in Preview with the 50 individual bulbs.  I don't have any software that can do that part in any case.  I think I will just leave it squared off and not worry about it.

Actually since I gather that you created the S5 Preview, this way, (if you saved it), can you e-Mail the preview or arch prop file to me? 

Thanks for your efforts Alan.

 

[default]

8 hours ago, k6ccc said:

As I understand it, in S5, you recreated each arch as 50 individual bulbs rather than a pre-built arch.

Yes, only I created 1 arch that was skewed at the angle, then copied it 5 times

8 hours ago, k6ccc said:

 And the only purpose of the PaintShop work was to create a model of the desired shape so you knew what to re-create in Preview with the 50 individual bulbs.

Yes, exactly. By using your background picture, it allowed me to match up the perspective to the top of your fence line and using the existing dots to place the new bulbs on.

Since S5 Preview Creator is not a drawing program, this was an alternative way to give you the look you are going for.

8 hours ago, k6ccc said:

Actually since I gather that you created the S5 Preview, this way, (if you saved it), can you e-Mail the preview or arch prop file to me?

Sure see below. I actually remade them this evening. I noticed in the gif, my starting pixels were on the right as opposed to yours being on the left. So now the .lpeprop matches your orignal prop desgn a little closer. I didn't add any network, channel numbers, etc. that's easy enough for you to do.

I would advise loading the .lpeprop into a new preview and testing it out before adding to your current main preview. The Previews can be sensitive to prop changes. Since it is a .lpeprop file you can either group or select all and resize them to better fit your preview.

Alan...

Right Click, Save As  

jims 6 arches skewed.lpeprop

Edited July 3, 2020 by default

[PhilMassey]

 

9 hours ago, default said:

I would advise loading the .lpeprop into a new preview and testing it out before adding to your current main preview. The Previews can be sensitive to prop changes

And, create a copy of your main preview to work on along with a copy of a sequence so you don't potentially contaminate all of them, until you're sure everything looks OK.

Any time i am doing major preview changes, I make a copy of the XML file, just in case.

[dibblejr]

2 hours ago, PhilMassey said:

 

And, create a copy of your main preview to work on along with a copy of a sequence so you don't potentially contaminate all of them, until you're sure everything looks OK.

Any time i am doing major preview changes, I make a copy of the XML file, just in case.

Phil, can you expand on why and how to copy the xml file and what would it be used for?

Thank you

JR

[k6ccc]

Alan, appears that it is working fine.  Of course I heeded Phil's warning and doing ALL my testing on copies of both the test sequences and a copy of the preview.  I know far better than to burn my bridges!  I can always go back to a prior "working" version.

As for the edited image in PaintShop, I did something similar years ago with AutoCAD back in the S3 days when DMX pixels had to be manually placed one at a time.  Created the layout for my pixel star in AutoCAD and saved that as a .jpg file.  Then used that as a background temporarily to accurately place the 270 pixels in Visualizer.  Once placed, then removed the background .jpg image.

Thank you!

 

[PhilMassey]

21 hours ago, dibblejr said:

Phil, can you expand on why and how to copy the xml file and what would it be used for?

Thank you

JR

Actually, JR  thought I answered this yesterday, but it didn't seem to post so we'll try again.

The Preview data is stored in an xml file called Lorpreviews.xml in the Commondata folder. I periodically make a backup of that file to a new filename in case I muck up my preview. It saved me on a couple of occasions, especially when I was new to S5. 

As an aside, you should also make a copy of your Preview using the copy button in the preview sidebar in the Sequencer. If you are making changes to previews or opening other people's sequences make sure you work on a copy of your Preview until you are sure nothing gets messed up. but if it does, you have a copy of the Lorpreviews.xml to fall back on if all else fails.

You also need this file if moving to another sequencing machine.

I'm a bit OCD about this stuff, but I've been bit before.

 

[dibblejr]

2 hours ago, PhilMassey said:

Actually, JR  thought I answered this yesterday, but it didn't seem to post so we'll try again.

The Preview data is stored in an xml file called Lorpreviews.xml in the Commondata folder. I periodically make a backup of that file to a new filename in case I muck up my preview. It saved me on a couple of occasions, especially when I was new to S5. 

As an aside, you should also make a copy of your Preview using the copy button in the preview sidebar in the Sequencer. If you are making changes to previews or opening other people's sequences make sure you work on a copy of your Preview until you are sure nothing gets messed up. but if it does, you have a copy of the Lorpreviews.xml to fall back on if all else fails.

You also need this file if moving to another sequencing machine.

I'm a bit OCD about this stuff, but I've been bit before.

 

Thank you. That would have saved me in January, February and March when everything seemed to go wrong with any imported vis file props.

What I haven't seemed to wrap my head around is before I started playing around with S5 I kept reading post where members were saying images and videos needed to be kept in a folder for the sequence and they cant be moved. However all of the sequences brought from my S4 sequencing computer to my S5 show computer have only the LMS file with no additional files.

Well there's more I haven't gotten my head wrapped around yet but that one comes to mind.

Happy 4th of July.

JR