String starting position

[LarryDrumAZ]

Is there a way in SS to set it up to match my pixel strings that start at the bottom on the 1st string and continue from the top on the second and so on? So far all I have seen is a

Ccr controller placement top or bottom. I am not using ccrs on my tree, rather 50 CT node strings.

Thanks

[BrianBruderer]

There are two modes in SuperStar, CCR mode and Visualization mode. To do what you are describing you need to use visualization mode. Do the following:

 

1) Create a Visualization in the visualizer that matche your display. save the visualization file

2) launch SuperStar, click on the File menu and select "Import Visualization"

3) In the Import Visualization dialog box, you will want to select "Vertical"

 

 

But you probably have questions about step number 1. In the next release of S3 there will be a DMX Pixel tool that will make things easier. But currently you need to do one of the following 3 approaches:

 

A) Create each pixel as a single bulb and in the fixture properties dialog box, set the type of the bulb to "RGB"
This works and many have done it, but it is tedius and the sequence editor is limited to 1000 fixtures, so you can only create 1000 pixels this way.

There is a 3rd party utility that will create DMX RGB lights for you. Realize that it does it by creating a single bulb for each pixel. But it automates some of the process.
Here is a thread on the forums that discusses it:
http://forums.lightorama.com/index.php?/topic/26528-rgb-pixel-utility/?p=284313



C) SuperStar v3.10.14 and above have an added feature to help support DMX lights. If you have an older version then download the latest version by going to the lightorama main page, click on "Support" then click on "S3 Download" then click on the "Download Now" button.

To use this feature you must use an imported visualization. There is a new keyword that you can put in the comment line of a Prop that tells superstar that the prop is to be treated as DMX lights. Note that the keyword only works in a prop, it will not work in a fixture. To use this new feature do the following:


1) Launch the Visualizer

2) Click on the "CCR Draw Wizard" tool, this is the one that has a multi-colored circle with a 2 segment line on top of it. (do NOT use the "Draw Cosmic Color Ribbon" tool)

3) Do a click and drag to draw a single line, double click to terminate the line.

4) A dialog box titled "Number of Pixels" will appear, Type in a name for the "Prop (CCR) Name" and then change the number to the total number of pixels in your DMX string. This number can be any number from 2 to 500. In other words, don't worry about having it be more than the number of pixels in a CCR which is 50. In most of my testing I used 60 as the number of pixels in a string.

5) After clicking on OK, a dialog box will appear titled "New/Existing fixture". Use the default which is "Create as many new Fixtures as required (Recommended)"

6) After clicking on OK, the visualizer will create a string that will have one or more CCRs in it, enough to create as many pixels as you specified. Don't worry about defining the Unit IDs for the CCRs, you can leave them undefined because SuperStar will ignore them.

7) On the right side of the visualizer are two buttons labeled "Fixtures" and "Props". Click on the "Props" button and then double click on the prop that you just created.

8) In the comment line of the prop, add the text "superstar dmx=<universe>,<channel>"   (do not enter the double quotes into the comment line, just the text inside the double quotes)

    <universe> is the universe to use for the first pixel of the prop and <channel> is the channel to use for the first pixel of the prop.

   For example, if you had 6 strings with 60 pixels each, you would add 6 props and you could add the following in the comment line of the props:

   superstar dmx=1,1

   superstar dmx=1,181

   superstar dmx=1,361

   superstar dmx=2,31

   superstar dmx=2,231

   superstar dmx=2,410

 

In the above example, the third string starts with universe=1 and channel=361. SuperStar will automatically bump up to the next universe when it runs out of channels for the current universe. So the last 10 pixels in the third string will use universe 2.

Also, as noted earlier, when SuperStar sees the keywords "superstar dmx=" then it ignores the unit id settings in the CCRs that are in the prop and uses the universe, channel settings that you specify.
 
Note that because SuperStar is using the comment line to supporting dmx, you cannot play the exported sequence back to the visualization because the Visualizer doesn't recognize the dmx settings that you placed in the comment line.
 

[LarryDrumAZ]

Thanks Brian, I will give it a try.