Background/Foreground

[iresq]

I want to shimmer and dim at the same time (he he, that sounds kinda funny). I don't have hardware yet, so i'm just playing.

I programmed a long fade sequence than used the foreground shimmer. Is this correct or should it be program the shimmer than use the fade in the foreground? Is there a difference?

Also, if I understand this correctly, the background tool applys an effect to anything that is not on. What is the purpose or an example of were you would use this?

[LightORamaDan]

iresq wrote:

I want to shimmer and dim at the same time (he he, that sounds kinda funny). I don't have hardware yet, so i'm just playing.

I programmed a long fade sequence than used the foreground shimmer. Is this correct or should it be program the shimmer than use the fade in the foreground? Is there a difference?

Also, if I understand this correctly, the background tool applys an effect to anything that is not on. What is the purpose or an example of were you would use this?

Currently you cannot fade a shimmer or twinkle effect. That will be a new feature available next year.

[bob]

iresq wrote:

Also, if I understand this correctly, the background tool applys an effect to anything that is not on. What is the purpose or an example of were you would use this?

A little example:

Let's say you have four channels, and you want the lights to chase across them, every quarter second. So you have Channel 1 on from 0 to 0.25, 2 on from 0.25 to 0.5, 3 on from 0.5 to 0.75, and 4 on from 0.75 to 1.00.

Now you decide that instead of just having the channels off at the other times, you would like a fade up during those times. You can then select all four channels for the whole range (0.00 - 1.00), and apply a "background fade up".

The four channels will still be chasing every quarter second, but now those "on" events are punctuating a smooth, overall fade up instead of punctuating "offness".

Or, if you had instead used a "foreground fade up", the four channels would be chasing while fading up.

[iresq]

OK, now I understand and perfect timing. I am trying to find a way to reduce some of the blinky ness. This will do that.

[Scott Keon]

is this still true a single channel can't twinkle while fadeing? Is there an easy way to decrease the intensity while fading?

[Scott Keon]

Typo, I want to decrease intensity of a twinkle.

[LightORamaDan]

Scott Keon wrote:

is this still true a single channel can't twinkle while fadeing? Is there an easy way to decrease the intensity while fading?

Shimmer and Twinkle while fading is a planned enhancement that will be here in plenty of time for this season. So if you think such an effect would be nice, put a fade in there for now and later you can go back and draw over them with a shimmer fade or twinkle fade.

Dan

[michael.farney]

Scott Keon wrote:

is this still true a single channel can't twinkle while fadeing? Is there an easy way to decrease the intensity while fading?

You can always fake it. I had "fading twinkles" in 2005 and 2006. All you do is draw a long fade in a very, very tight timing grid (1/10 is probably not tight enough). Then, just remove potions of the fade to simulate the twinkle effect. You'll want to manipulate blocks of horizontal cells on and off to get the right effect. Doing it one cell at a time won't get the right effect.

If you work with it long enough, you can make it look identical to a LOR twinkle, especially if you're doing this on lots of channels. It just won't be random. It's very time consuming, but it works and looks great.