Mark Eli

Fixtures are released for Vision as they're completed throughout the day/week. There's not currently any logging of what gets added, and there's nothing in place to be able to track it.

Hi All, I just wanted to pop in and give a little clarification here. Brandon is mostly correct here. Most, Vision fixtures that do not have moving heads are modeled as hung. In this particular case, it is not. As Brandon has said, the exporter looks for moving heads and flips them. Everything else is left alone, which is what's causing your issue. That particular fixture, needs to be flipped during the export, but isn't. So the quickest and easiest fix is the one he described. Here's a bit of extra detail in case it's helpful. In Vectorworks, select all of the fixtures that are being exported incorrectly. In your case, the SGM P-5. Under the Shape tab of the Object Info Palette, the first data field under the Edit button is the Device Type drop down box. By default, it is set to Light. Change that to Moving Light as highlighted here: Vectorworks may take a moment to update the OIP, once you've selected Moving Light. When it does, reexport your file, and open in Vision. All of your P-5s in Vision, should now be oriented to match Vectorworks. I've attached my test file as well. I've set the right fixtures Device Type to Moving Light, and the left to Light, so it should be easy to see the difference. P5 Orientation.vwx Hopefully this helps, Mark

Hi Liam, I'm sorry to say I haven't tested with Vista in quite a few years, and when I did it was still V2. That being said, iirc it worked at the time. Generally speaking, if the offline editor outputs Artnet or sACN, Vision should be able to see it. The only thing you might have to watch out for is, if Vista is picky about it's IP addresses. At one point, having the correct IPs was a major issue, but in recent years offline editors and consoles have become more capable of adapting to whatever your computers IP happens to be. For specifics, you'll need to check Vista's documentation. Beyond that, there shouldn't be anything other than the editor that needs setup. Thanks, Mark

Hi @GloriamLT I'm going to jump in real quick and try to get you pointed in the right direction. In the real world, a console is how you control lights. There's a bunch out there, so take your pick. I can't teach you how to use any of them, because they're all different and, that's why we have youtube. So the console and the lights need to be patched, this will be covered in most console tutorials. The important part is that the console and light need to have matching patch information. Beyond that, you're going to need to do some research on how all these things work together in the real world. As for using Vision, you'll build your scene in Vectorworks, and then export it to Vision, assuming you have a license. In your case, since you're using the demo, you can still use the scene you've made but, you'll be limited to 5 lights. Vision acts the same as a real light. So you'll need a console to control the lights in Vision, the same as you would in the real world. Also, just like the real world, the patch information that's in vision for each light needs to match what's in the console. I can see from your picture of the patch window that your patch information isn't exporting correctly. That's why there's a bunch of lines highlighted in red. What you'll need to do to correct that is go into Vectorworks then go to File>Document Settings>Spotlight Preferences and a new window will pop up. Click on the Lighting Device tab if it isn't already selected, and then click the bottom right button labeled, Edit Visualizer Data Mapping. This will give you a new dialog box with a bunch of options. The only ones you really need to worry about are the ones labeled Universe and Channel. This is how you tell Vectorworks and Vision where to find the patch information in Vectorworks. As a guess, judging from the picture of the OIP you posted, you'll want to set Universe to Universe, and Channel to Address. Then send your file to Vision again, which should give the lights the correct patch information. As for getting the patch information from Vectorworks into the console. In the case of QLC, and most others, there's no way to do that. Patching is usually a manual process. So, once again, google some videos, there's lots. Also, here's a link to our getting started guide, which may give you some additional insight into how vision works. https://www.vectorworks.net/training/2019/getting-started-guides/vision/what-is-vision

That looks like you've got some Z fighting going on. Basically, two faces of the geometry are in the same place and fighting to be the one that's being rendered. You'll have to find whatever geometry isn't your screens and either move it, or delete it.

Hey Dan, As a guess, there's probably an antivirus or firewall somewhere blocking the update. It could also be the user account control. Microsoft has done a lot of weird things with permissions and a lot of settings can get changed when they update. If you could, send me an email tech@vectorworks.net and I can send you some instructions for updating manually.

Hey Robert, You're using the Sunstrip Active, which doesn't have dmx controlled rotation. You want the Sunstrip Pro which does. Easy fix though, you should be able to just change the fixture mode in the OIP in Vectorworks and reexport.

Hi Anthony, unfortunately because of the issues currently present with visions capture card functionality, we don't have any verification on which cards are working and which aren't. For the moment, because I can't say capture is working for everyone, I'm going to say, this isn't working at all. As much as I hate saying it, I'd rather tell you that, than send you down a rabbit hole that you might not find the bottom of. I've been told it's on our list of priority fixes, but I have no information on where exactly they are in the process.

Daniel, I totally get it. There's like to have and need to have, and we need to have video steaming back in vision in some form, we're on the same page there. Honestly, I'd love it if we could support both or everything really, but again there's only so many hours in a day. On the up side NDI is cross platform, and at least on the concept level it seems simple enough. The converters though may be a little harder sell, if we looked at this as a full replacement. As for spout and syphon, we've been asked several times about them. Spout is in a lot of stuff now, so it would be cool to support it but, it's windows only. Same thing for syphon. Everything in vision is cross platform. As it is now, I don't know that it would be considered because of that, I could be wrong though. If there was a library that rolled them together so we could use a single call for either in vision, that might be something to be considered. On the up side, the library we use for capture actually has support for a lot of hardware, including black magic. It's just a matter of running down why it's not working. Which we are working on. I've personally put in more hours than I can count looking at this one thing. That being said, while I can't promise anything, I will be doing some deeper research into NDI once I get their SDK.

Daniel, Believe me I understand your frustration. I probably get more upset than you do, when vision falls short. I along with others have years of our lives in this product, so it’s something we very much want to be good. As for what media servers support the protocol, that’s my fault. In my head, when I said media servers I was including software with that. What I’m really asking is, how many people would I make happy if we put the time into this, over fixing the existing system. We only have so many hours in the day, so we want to make the most people happy with that time as we can. To justify putting time into changing the existing system, I have to be able to say I’m going to make more people happy adding the new thing, than I would fixing the old thing. Honestly, I like the idea, but I do have some concerns. Glancing over their website I saw they have a VLC plugin, which is super awesome but, their download links are broken so I couldn’t check it out. Same thing for the SDK. If you happen to have good download links to those, please DM them to me so I can give it a look. One of the major things I’m concerned with is you said it uses converters to deal with other protocols. Are these converters hardware or software? How much do they cost? Who makes them? With capture cards there’s lots of venders and price points, can we say the same thing about NDI? These are all questions we have to ask when we’re trying to figure out where our time is going to be best spent. So, the more detail you can give me, the better.

Hey Daniel, While I must point out that, integrating something new into existing code is rarely as easy as it may seem, this is interesting. I've seen similar in use with large video walls in the past. Which media servers are using this protocol I haven't looked at them in a while so I'm a bit behind the times.

Hi Andy, This is a known issue that unfortunately effects several fixtures. We have a bug report on it, so at this point it's a matter of tracking down the cause. Thanks, Mark

Hi Andy, This is actually operating as intended. The photometrics of this fixture were never published, and had to be estimated at the time of creation. This is actually fairly normal for fixtures that have been around for a while. As a tip, any time you notice something you think might be off with a fixture, you can check in Vectorworks. Just open your drawing, select the fixture in question and go to Spotlight>Visualization>Edit Vision Data There you'll find the comment section for that fixture, where we put any notes about the fixture we might have. Any time you see the word estimated in the comments, that just means the manufacturer didn't tell us, so we've had to make an educated guess.

@cwinterLD Not sure what's going on yet, but I did notice I got better results when loading a file from vectorworks as apposed to the add instrument tool. Give that a try and let us know if you still see the same thing

Hey Brendan, Which mode of the cosmopix is that?

Hi Tom, Unfortunately, this is a known bug. I've heard it is being worked on and will hopefully be fixed in the near future.