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How to create dancing animation in my WS2811 Pixel matric


Rousefamily5

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Hello, need some support... I am wondering if anyone knows what software, programming is needed created the dancing Santa, Elf and Gingerbread as done in the  window matric, see link at the 12:40 second mark of Trista Light 2017 show. 

Thanks, 

Rousefamily5 Christmas

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Ok, first off, this sequence was created in Xlights so their technique might be a bit different.  In LOR, if you had a GIF of the dancing elf, Santa, and Gingerbread, you can easily import their animation into your LOR sequence.  Any GIF can be added to your sequence but the problem is, most GIF's you see on the web have a much higher resolution that what can be displayed on a matix.  Finding one that still looks good once it's on the matrix is the real trick.  Look for lower quality GIF's and they will look the closest to what you really see.

So, if you find a gif that's 24 x 50 pixels (or whatever your matrix is), then it should look exact.  Anything bigger than that, and you'll have to be far away to understand what it looks like. 

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You can use the Movie motion effect in the S5 Sequencer. Or you can use the Picture motion effect with an animated GIF. As mentioned above, lower resolution source material will look better on real lights.

Matt

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 7/26/2021 at 3:49 PM, MattBrown said:

You can use the Movie motion effect in the S5 Sequencer. Or you can use the Picture motion effect with an animated GIF. As mentioned above, lower resolution source material will look better on real lights.

Matt

How do you "speed up" the animation?  Lets say I want to take a gif and play it slightly faster?  in S4 when you imported each frame, you could adjust each frame to make the animation have a custom speed.

Thanks!

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1 hour ago, BluMan said:

How do you "speed up" the animation?  Lets say I want to take a gif and play it slightly faster?  in S4 when you imported each frame, you could adjust each frame to make the animation have a custom speed.

Thanks!

I believe there is a scroll bar to speed up gifs in the pictures effect.

They are more than likely animated or part of a video.

As Matt states above find the lowest resolution gifs. Remember we are dealing with a minuscule amount of Pixels compared to most pics/ videos.

Also always use the actual prop for sequencing. It sort of is bad if yiu wait until show time to test it and the image looks like doo doo.

You may try 50 images to find one that looks best.

I found the best images are a solid color on a black background as I used in my Despacito and other sequences.

I know a lot of you like colors images but the solid color on black background look great while dancing.

JR

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7 minutes ago, dibblejr said:

I believe there is a scroll bar to speed up gifs in the pictures effect.

There is a speed slider but it doesn't seem to have any effect on the actual speed of the gif.  It always plays at the speed it was saved at.

Thanks for the input Dibblejr, I'm working on a "Disco Night" show and wanted some of the animations to display faster or slower.  I know there is external programs online that will change the speed of the gif for you but unless you know the percentage of increase or decrease, you will never get it right.

 

Edited by BluMan
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11 minutes ago, BluMan said:

There is a speed slider but it doesn't seem to have any effect on the actual speed of the gif.  It always plays at the speed it was saved at.

Thanks for the input Dibblejr, I'm working on a "Disco Night" show and wanted some of the animations to display faster or slower.  I know there is external programs online that will change the speed of the gif for you but unless you know the percentage of increase or decrease, you will never get it right.

 

I was able to Make a snoopy red Barron plane spiral to The ground faster.

I helped another member with that gif.

JR

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1 minute ago, dibblejr said:

I was able to Make a snoopy red Barron plane spiral to The ground faster.

in S5?  Maybe I'm doing something wrong.  In S4, each frame was shown separately in the grid and you could adjust the size of each frame to slow it down or speed it up.  I have not found a way yet to do that in S5.  I'll keep trying.

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Speed in the S5 picture effect controls the movement - left/right, up/down. There is no control over GIF playback speed - you would need to adjust that using an external program.

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Easy gif animator is the program I use to adjust the speed and size of each frame prior to importing the image. It even has a clean resize which maintains as much of the image quality as possible. This helps alot when a gif is say 400x250 and you need it rescaled below 100x50. It's an old program but it still works great to this day. You can change the frame properties for speed, resize and edit as needed and can even speed the framerate speed at 0.01 if you want it that fast. Its good for editing individual frames as well. It was a really easy program to learn. Luckily for me I have been using it since 2007 and have done lots of gif animations for websites and social media platforms over the years with it. Might be helpful for you. The good thing about easy gif animator it shows you what speed the gif is, You can change that speed and preview it before saving. Which allows for plenty of adjustment for the proper speed.

Edited by GriswoldStyle
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1 hour ago, MattBrown said:

Speed in the S5 picture effect controls the movement - left/right, up/down. There is no control over GIF playback speed - you would need to adjust that using an external program.

Must be how I made the airplanes go down faster.

JR

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If you find a gif to use, try to find one with a black background. There are not many with black backgrounds, but those work awesome too. 
 

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9 hours ago, weigh2fast4u@yahoo.com said:

If you find a gif to use, try to find one with a black background. There are not many with black backgrounds, but those work awesome too. 
 

Use GIF stickers. They have no background and on 99% of them the background does not light up at all. Here's a link to one I use on my Matrix using the Motion effect "Picture" https://giphy.com/stickers/harry-styles-11t3uw7yp35UGc GIF stickers work the best for me. 

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40 minutes ago, Box on Rails said:

Use GIF stickers. They have no background and on 99% of them the background does not light up at all. Here's a link to one I use on my Matrix using the Motion effect "Picture" https://giphy.com/stickers/harry-styles-11t3uw7yp35UGc GIF stickers work the best for me. 

Sweet. Lol do these light up the background on the prop when running the lights?

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23 hours ago, weigh2fast4u@yahoo.com said:

Sweet. Lol do these light up the background on the prop when running the lights?

Most of them do not but I have found a small number of them that do but very lightly. you should download the stickers you like and test them. if you watch the video above I believe those animated Santa effects are regular GIF files because the background is lit up pretty good. 

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 7/26/2021 at 1:43 PM, BluMan said:

Ok, first off, this sequence was created in Xlights so their technique might be a bit different.  In LOR, if you had a GIF of the dancing elf, Santa, and Gingerbread, you can easily import their animation into your LOR sequence.  Any GIF can be added to your sequence but the problem is, most GIF's you see on the web have a much higher resolution that what can be displayed on a matix.  Finding one that still looks good once it's on the matrix is the real trick.  Look for lower quality GIF's and they will look the closest to what you really see.

So, if you find a gif that's 24 x 50 pixels (or whatever your matrix is), then it should look exact.  Anything bigger than that, and you'll have to be far away to understand what it looks like. 

Hi BluMan, So I'm testing the matrix, and BTW thank you for recommending the GIF. Those were easy to find. I wanted to test the dancing Gingerman and Santa, however, my LOR does not recognize the 23x31 matrix horizonal rectangular, 4 four folds and number of pixels at 92. Everything is backward and upside down , I did hours of investigation to find out under the TEXT PE effect the the text 'TEST' was upside down and backwards text. I found this at two folds. Any idea what I'm doing wrong? 

Rousefamily5 Christmas

 

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7 minutes ago, Rousefamily5 said:

Hi BluMan, So I'm testing the matrix, and BTW thank you for recommending the GIF. Those were easy to find. I wanted to test the dancing Gingerman and Santa, however, my LOR does not recognize the 23x31 matrix horizonal rectangular, 4 four folds and number of pixels at 92. Everything is backward and upside down , I did hours of investigation to find out under the TEXT PE effect the the text 'TEST' was upside down and backwards text. I found this at two folds. Any idea what I'm doing wrong? 

Rousefamily5 Christmas

 

Usually, this indicates that the starting location in Prop Definition does not match with the way the matrix was actually wired. Try specifying a different corner in Prop Definition.

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