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<< Click to Display Table of Contents >> Navigation: The Light-O-Rama Software Package > SuperStar Sequencer > Custom Sequences > Smooth Effects |
Smooth Effects look best on a large matrix of RGB lights. They are designed to change large areas of lights in a smooth flowing manner.
There are four types of smooth effects:
•Fan
These settings are common across all of the smooth effects.
These settings stretch or shrink in the X and Y direction. This could also be called the aspect ratio. Normally you will want to leave these set at 1.000. These settings will become something other than 1.000 if you use the Scale feature in the “Move or Scale Selected Effects” dialog box.
All of the smooth effects can have 1-8 colors. Click on “Nbr of Colors” to select how many colors you want. You can change the colors by clicking on the color squares underneath the “Nbr of Color” control.
Blend Colors – Select this to make the colors blend into each other more smoothly. Note that you can select “Blend Colors” and set the last color to black to make the effect fade to black.
•Normal – Displays the effect normally without any shimmer or twinkle
•Shimmer – Turns the lights off and on quickly to create a shimmer effect. There is a shimmer speed control that defaults to 10. You can slow the shimmer down by reducing the speed.
Note: For pixels all channels in the pixel will be turned on and off together meaning that a white pixel will shimmer white.
•Twinkle – Turns the lights off and on slowly to create a twinkle effect. There is a shimmer speed control that defaults to 5. The speed can be set to any value from 1 to 10.
Note: For pixels the channels will be turned on and off individually. For example, in a white pixel the red, green, and blue channels will be turned off individually giving a multicolored twinkle. If you want a twinkle that is not multicolored then use shimmer and reduce the speed to 5 or below.
After launching the Smooth Effects dialog box, click on the "Shockwave" tab.
In the green sequencing grid, there will be a small circle and a line ending with an arrow head. The small circle marks the center of the shockwave. The line ending with an arrow head marks the radius. Click on the "Add" button in the "Smooth Effects" dialog box, and then click on the "Play" button to see the shockwave. You should see a shockwave effect start from the center and end where the arrow head was.
To change the center point and radius, do a click and drag with the left mouse button. You can change the direction and length of the radius with the right mouse button. For example, do a click and drag with the right mouse button starting at the end of the arrow line and drag towards the center where the circle is. This will make the line start at the outside and go towards the middle with the arrow pointing towards the middle. Add another shockwave effect and play it, and you should see a shockwave start big and contract to a smaller size.
The Start Angle and End Angle are grayed out, because Shockwave does not use them.
There is a Start Width and an End Width. The Start Width is the width of the "leading edge"of the shockwave. The End Width is the width of the "trailing edge" of the shockwave. Click on the Up or Down Arrow buttons next to the Start Width or End Width to change their values.
Setting a positive number will make the shockwave start slowly and increase in speed as it travels. Setting a negative number will make the shockwave start quickly and slow down as it travels.
After launching the Smooth Effects dialog box, click on the "Spiral" tab.
In the green sequencing grid, there will be a small circle and a line ending with an arrow head. The small circle marks the center of the spiral. The line ending with an arrow head marks the radius and start angle. Click on the "Add" button in the "Smooth Effects" dialog box, and then click on the "Play" button to see the spiral. You should see a spiral effect start from the center and end where the arrow head was.
To change the center point and radius, do a click and drag with the left mouse button. You can change the direction and length of the radius with the right mouse button. For example, do a click and drag with the right mouse button starting at the end of the arow line and drag towards the center where the circle is. This will make the line start at the outside and go towards the middle with the arrow pointing towards the middle. Add another spiral effect and play it. You should see a spiral start at the outside and spiral inward, ending where the arrow head was.
The end angle of the spiral can be changed by changing the value in the End Angle field. Changing the value of the Revolutions field will also change the value in the End Angle field. The default is an end angle of 360 degrees and 1.00 revolutions. The default setting will make a spiral that travels clockwise from 0 degrees to 360 degrees. Set Revolutions to 2.00 to make the spiral go around two times. Setting a negative number for End Angle or Revolutions will make the spiral travel counterclockwise.
There is a Start Width and an End Width. The Start Width is the pixel width at the start of the spiral. The End Width is the pixel width at the end of the spiral.
This is the time length the spiral will stay on screen before it erases itself.
Setting a positive number will make the spiral start slowly and increase in speed as it travels. Setting a negative number will make the spiral start quickly and slow down as it travels. Setting acceleration to zero means do not accelerate, but even with acceleration set to zero, spiral effects will have a natural acceleration if the start width is smaller than the end width, and a natural deceleration if the start width is bigger than the end width.
After launching the Smooth Effects dialog box, click on the "Fan" tab. Fan uses a series of Spiral effects that can look like a fan.
•Center Point, Radius and Start Angle
In the green sequencing grid, there will be a small circle and a line ending with an arrow head. The small circle marks the center of the fan. The line ending with an arrow head marks the radius and start angle. Click on the "Add" button in the "Smooth Effects" dialog box, and then click on the "Play" button to see the fan. You should see a fan effect start from the start angle and rotate at the default speed of 0.25 revolutions per second.
To change the center point and radius, do a click and drag with the left mouse button. You can change the direction and length of the radius with the right mouse button. For example, do a click and drag with the right mouse button, starting at the end of the arrow line, and drag towards the center where the circle is. This will make the line start at the outside and go towards the middle with the arrow pointing towards the middle. Add another fan effect and play it. The fan will start from the start angle and rotate at the default speed of 0.25 revolutions per second as it did before, except this time each element of the fan will travel inward instead of outward.
There is a start width and an end width. The start width is the pixel width of the start of each element of the fan. The end width is the pixel width at the end of each element of the fan.
This is the number of blades in the fan. The default is two. You can set the number of blades from 1 to 16.
This is the width of each blade in the fan. 50% means the blade width will be 50% of the distance to the next blade. Note that the blades start out being thin and get thicker as they rotate until they get to their Blade Width setting.
This is the rotation speed of the fan. The default is 0.25 revolutions per second. This means it will rotate one quarter of a revolution in one second, meaning it will take four seconds to make one full revolution. Positive numbers will rotate clockwise; negative numbers will rotate counterclockwise. With a setting of 0, the fan will build from the center outward and will not rotate.
The fan is built using a series of spirals. Each spiral is an element of the fan. Changing the element angle wil change the angle of each one of the spirals that make up the fan. Setting an angle of 0 will make straight elements. Setting a large angle will make the fan look sort of like a spinning galaxy.
This is the spacing between each element of the fan. Each element is a spiral. An element step angle of 10 means that each spiral will be built at intervals of 10 degrees. Setting a large element step angle will add space between the spirals.
Setting 0 means do not accelerate. Setting a positive number will make the fan start slow and increase in speed as it travels. Setting a negative number will make the fan start quickly and slow down as it travels. Note that if you use acceleration in a fan, the width of the fan will change as it accelerates or decelerates.
This means build the entire width of the blade of the fan all at once, so that the entire blade width is seen from the start to the finish.
After launching the Smooth Effects dialog box, click on the “Sine Wave” tab. Sine Wave produces a wiggly line that is known as a sine wave. It can be useful for creating a wiggly line across or down a tree that will look like tree garland.
•Show Entire Sine Wave at Start
In the green sequencing grid will be a small circle and a line ending with an arrow head. The small circle marks the start of the sine wave. The tip of the arrow head marks the end of the sine wave. To change the start and end do a click and drag with the left mouse button.
There is a Start Height and an End Height. The height is also known as the amplitude of the sine wave. Note that you can make the sine wave be a straight line by setting the start and end height to 0.
There is a Start Cycle Angle and an End Cycle Angle. The Start Cycle Angle sets how far into the sine wave you will be at the start of the sine wave. One cycle of a sine wave is 360 degrees. This means the “first top hump” is 0-180 degrees and the “second bottom hump” is 180-360 degrees. When you change the End Cycle Angle setting the Cycles setting will automatically change. Also, when you change the Cycles setting the End Cycle Angle setting will automatically change. In summary, increasing the number of cycles will increase the number of wiggles in the line.
There is a Start Width and an End Width. The Start Width is the starting width of the line in pixels. The End Width is the ending width of the line in pixels. Increasing these values makes the line thicker.
The Tail Time Length is the number of seconds the sine wave stays on the screen.
When this setting is unselected the sine wave will get drawn from the start point to the end point. After it is drawn the sine wave will stay still. When this setting is selected the entire sine wave will appear on the screen all at once and then it will wiggle for the duration of the Tail Time Length.
With Acceleration set to a positive number the sine wave will be drawn slowly at first and will be drawn faster as time goes on. With Acceleration set to a negative number the sine wave will be drawn fast at first and will be drawn slower as time goes on.
This dialog box is used to modify attributes that are shared by all types of effects. Currently it supports modification of the Clip Rectangle in all the effects that are selected. The “Undo” feature is not supported for this dialog box. So it is a good practice to rename your sequence before performing this function. That way you will keep the original file before you changed it. So the steps you want to follow are:
1.Click on the “File” menu and select “Save As” and rename your sequence
2.Select the effects you want to modify. To select all effects, click on the “Edit” menu and select “Select All”
3.Click on the “Tools” menu and select “Modify Selected Effects…” or click on the “Modify Selected Effects” button on the Toolbar
4.In the “Modify Selected Effects” dialog box you can choose the types of effects you want modified. It defaults to all of them being modified.
•Manual Clip Rectangle
Select “No Clip” if you do not want the effects to have a clip rectangle
Select “Manual Clip” and then press the “Shft” key while doing a mouse drag on the sequencing grid. This will define the clip rectangle on the sequencing grid. Click on the “Modify Selected Effects” button.