Spoke Prop Definition for a Windmill Fan

[bbrescia]

I have done up a windmill prop for this Christmas. The top fan has 10 blades. I have placed 5 smart RGB lay-flat nodes on each blade AND 1 node between the blades so I wouldn't have to cut the wire. So there are a total of 6 smart RGB pixels per blade. 10 x 6 = 60 pixels or 180 channels. I've chosen a spike design in my PE preview to model this prop and I've also assigned it to one unique DMX universe.

My problem is that not all of the nodes are lighting up. I am using "bars" effect. It does light each blade to simulate left or right blade motion but not all the nodes light up on each blade. It certainly can't be hardware - it's all one string with every 6th node covered in black tape.

Any ideas here?

Thanks - Bob

[MattBrown]

I love your windmill! If you select your prop in Preview Design and select Prop > Layout from the menu it will show how PE expects the pixels to be wired (sort of). Each column in the grid is a spoke, and the bottom row is the center of the prop. Unfortunately, as you can see from that, it doesn't expect a zig-zag pattern as you have done, but rather that the first pixel of each spoke is at the center.

As a work-around, you can define a custom prop that has the pixels ordered as you have wired them. The other advantage to this approach is that you can skip the pixels that have black tape over them - so they never light up.

Matt

[bbrescia]

Thank you Matt - I am proud of this 10-foot tall heavy windmill also - the 3 sides and all of the crossbars have dumb RGB on them, working great - I will rewire the bulbs on the blades - thank you so much for your speedy reply - Bob