Can't fade and twinkle in 2.8.12, or is it just me?

[chuckd]

Using the foreground effects, I can't seem to lay down a twinkle effect, then overlay a fade. It works just fine if the cells are 100% ON, but not if there is any lesser intensity with an attempted fade.

I'm adding new features this year, and this is going to be a bit of a problem if this feature has been lost.

This is with 2.8.12.

Sorry if this has already been mentioned, but a quick search didn't find it for me.

So here's how to repeat the problem:

1. Highlight some cells, and turn on 50% intensity
2. Make sure the Foreground Effects are clicked on
3. With the same highlighted cells that are now 50% intensity, do a fade down
4. The 50% intensity has been replaced with a fade.

If you do the same procedure with the cells fully ON, you get a nice fade over the cells that were previously ON (like it's supposed to work).

Thanks for any advice here.

Chuck

[Don]

The Fading Twinkle is a special effect, not a regular one. (Not near a PC with the Editor on it, forget what it's called.)

Look for the "Star" icon in your taskbar at the top. To the right of that will be the options you can chose for a special effect.

You have the right idea for overlaying effects, but the fading twinkle (and others) require the use of the special effects section.

[chuckd]

Well I swear I did this a lot last year, and I've never used the Custom Effect tool. The funny thing is LOR's own help documentation talks about Foreground Effects using a ramping twinkle as the example.

Either way, seems like the Custom Effect tool might help me here. I'll check it out.

[Don]

What part of the help file is showing that? I'm not seeing where foreground/background effects and Custom Effects are linked together.

[chuckd]

I probably misread the help, but it's in the Foreground and Background section. There does seem to be a bug (or documentation error) in that I can't do a foreground fade unless the underlying cells are completely on. The help says that the cells involved in the foreground process can be not completely off, which would imply that you should be able to fade up or down a bunch of cells that were set to 50% intensity. I can't make that work.

[Don]

chuckd wrote:

I probably misread the help, but it's in the Foreground and Background section. There does seem to be a bug (or documentation error) in that I can't do a foreground fade unless the underlying cells are completely on. The help says that the cells involved in the foreground process can be not completely off, which would imply that you should be able to fade up or down a bunch of cells that were set to 50% intensity. I can't make that work.

I think it's working right, and documented right. Might be a bit on the confusing side.

If you'd like, shoot me a PM with your phone number and I'll explain it to you.

[bob]

chuckd wrote:

I probably misread the help, but it's in the Foreground and Background section. There does seem to be a bug (or documentation error) in that I can't do a foreground fade unless the underlying cells are completely on. The help says that the cells involved in the foreground process can be not completely off, which would imply that you should be able to fade up or down a bunch of cells that were set to 50% intensity. I can't make that work.

It sounds to me like it's working as designed. "Foreground" and "background" apply your selected tool to certain cells; they do not also modify what that selected tool means.

That is, I think you're expecting "foreground twinkle" to mean "change every cell in the selected range which is not off to a twinkle, keeping the same intensities as they currently have". But that's not what it is designed to do - it is designed to "change every cell in the selected range which is not off to a 100% twinkle".

That is, you have selected the tool "100% Twinkle". You are applying that tool to some subset of cells in your selected range. Exactly which cells are in that subset is what is determined by the fact that you have selected "Foreground"; "Foreground" does not affect anything other than that.

Changing the effect type, while keeping the intensities, would be something completely different. I suggest sending a request to wishlist@lightorama.com regarding this.

[chuckd]

I do understand what you're saying, but the usual application here is to apply a fade over some complex pattern. I might do the following:

1. Create something that looks like a checkerboard pattern out of the twinkle function (the block is NOT a solid block).
2. Then I want to fade out the whole effect (foreground fade on top of twinkle)

In this fashion, my twinkle should fade out. But it changes all of the twinkles to ramps instead.

Creating a 'Custom' effect of twinkle and fade down doesn't work unless I'm creating a nice solid-filled block area. In my particular case, this almost never happens.

I guess I assumed that the fade down/up would fade the effect that was previously there, instead of replacing them with ON.

I still swear that it used to work this way in an older version of LOR, because I have this 'twinkle fade' effect all over my songs from last year, and I'm fairly certain I've never used the 'Custom' effect before.

[bob]

Unless I'm misunderstanding what you're saying, I'm pretty confident that it has never worked that way.

But in any case, why not just use a custom tool along with foreground?

That is,

(1) Make your checkerboard pattern or whatever.

(2) Select the custom tool, custom twinkle, custom fade down, and foreground.

(3) Apply it to the area that contains the checkerboard pattern.

[bob]

Before:



After:



If that's not basically what you're looking to do, could you please let me know what I'm misunderstanding? Thanks.

[chuckd]

Did you do a foreground Custom effect set to twinkle/fade down?

I was starting with twinkles and trying to foreground a fade down only. Semantics I guess, this'll work for me. Thanks.

[bob]

chuckd wrote:

Did you do a foreground Custom effect set to twinkle/fade down?

Yes.