Edward Joseph

It surely did! We are working on getting together a features list and announcement post, but I think everyone is going to be super excited about this one. Vision 2018 looks amazing! And it runs buttery smooth! Here are the installers! http://release.vectorworks.net/nnapub/all/2018/SP0/391023/Vision2018-391023-installer1-win.exe http://release.vectorworks.net/nnapub/all/2018/SP0/391023/Vision2018-391023-installer1-osx.dmg

This is big news, here's hoping 2.6.1 fixes the issue, but this isn't really a new thing. The ETC offline editors are notorious for not actually broadcasting things. Which is why the initial mac tests we ran had us thinking the mac version didn't broadcast. Because well...it didn't.

The updater brings down new fixtures, not new builds. I misspoke, it looks like there was no official release for sp4, that's just what we called it internally. I am unaware of any marketing release. For those getting the weird Mac corrupted installer error, please be patient, I'm and trying to get the guys in engineering to kick off another installer.

Yeah, that would have been Vision 2.3, "Bring me to Life," back when that song was way too popular haha. See brandon's reply above, we plan on adding it, but we essentially have to build it from scratch.

For other users interested in this topic: I spoke with Daniel a bit ago, and there may be dependency issues present for virtual capture devices in windows 10. In other words, there may be some backend libraries missing from windows 10 to cause this to work. Daniel has noted that on an older chipset, this is working as expected. We at the office also have notice that OSX capture seems to work as expected. I will update all related posts once we can narrow down the issue with virtual capture devices. NOTE: If you are getting no capture devices populating, a blank preview, or a black video screen within vision, please update to Vision SP4 using the direct links below, this is also a full installer: http://release.vectorworks.net/nnapub/all/{brandedmajor}/{brandedminor}/V100/Vision2017-V100-installer4-win.exe http://release.vectorworks.net/nnapub/all/{brandedmajor}/{brandedminor}/V100/Vision2017-V100-installer4-osx.dmg

For other users interested in this topic: I spoke with Daniel a bit ago, and there may be dependency issues present for virtual capture devices in windows 10. In other words, there may be some backend libraries missing from windows 10 to cause this to work. Daniel has noted that on an older chipset, this is working as expected. We at the office also have notice that mac capture seems to work as expected. I will update all related posts once we can narrow down the issue with virtual capture devices. NOTE: If you are getting no capture devices populating, a blank preview, or a black video screen within vision, please update to Vision SP4 using the direct links below, this is also a full installer: http://release.vectorworks.net/nnapub/all/{brandedmajor}/{brandedminor}/V100/Vision2017-V100-installer4-win.exe http://release.vectorworks.net/nnapub/all/{brandedmajor}/{brandedminor}/V100/Vision2017-V100-installer4-osx.dmg

This seems to be the usual workflow. I'm not aware of any plugin similar to MA3D made by ETC that would make things easier.

I think @Rob Bookscan answer this a bit better, but most newer fixtures should have tails attached to the geometry, I know they are in the process of adding them to the fixtures that didn't have them previously.

Unfortunately, not quite yet. While the concept worked great in Vision 2, the user friendliness left something to be desired. Currently we are exploring different ways to make DMX transforms work a bit better and easier to use than Vision 2.

Hey Andy, I can have our fixture team take a look at this but the easiest way to get support for fixtures is to shoot an email over to tech@vectorworks.net. I wouldn't want it to get overlooked if I'm on vacation or something, and the whole team monitors that inbox.

Hey Andy, I have our fixture team looking into this now. The shutter issue is really, really weird. There's no reason it should be doing that, and no reason only shutter 2 should be doing that weird twitchy thing. We've confirmed on our end, I'll have him take a look at the focus as well. As for the additional issues, Animation wheel positioning/Macros are not simulated, nor are prism macros. These aren't ever done to my knowledge, there's no "macro file" we can get from the manufacturer, so the only way would be to add a keyframe animation system and reproduce it frame by frame. On fixtures like the BMFL blade, that would take a mind-numbingly long time, even if it were possible (to the tune of months, not days).

Hey Ted, You are spot on, Vision calculates lights as real lights, not painted cones of color, so projecting that light through transparent surfaces in real time is a bit out of reach for current graphics hardware. We try to keep things accurate to the real world with Vision, and as of yet we haven't found a way to do that accurately (and not melt GPUs).

Rob, the user is talking about animated scenery in Vision. To do this you would utilize a DMX Transform. Make all other objects invisible, and File>Export>Export ESC. Then make everything visible EXCEPT the objects you want to move (which you previously exported), then file>export>export ESC again with a different name. Open one of the esc files in Vision then File>merge the second file in Vision. Now, expand ROOT in the scene graph and select the esc file of your object you want to move, you can assign a Universe/Channel to control the movement and a Delta value to determine the direction and magnitude of the move. Please note however, that moving an LED wall while it's lit requires some pretty beefy GPU hardware, the more lights in your scene the more GPU power you need (gaming cards, Vision renders in realtime, workstation cards don't help as much here) this is doubly true when moving the position of lights. Make hoists, rigging, etc invisible in Vectorworks before sending to Vision, they are not used in Vision. You can float lights and geometry in the air with magic if you'd like and Vision will treat them the same. Also, Vision is limited to 5 fixtures or 100 channels of DMX, whichever comes first in the Demo version, so keep that in mind as well.

I didn't think of that, would it still show the other modes afterwards? I was under the impression that we linked .lit files to the Instrument Type, I was afraid changing that would sever that link, am I wrong?

Hey Scott, unfortunately there's no way to do this. You can, however select all of the fixtures of the same type, and change them all at once. I'd use the Spotlight Find and Modify tool, select instruments of type X, then change the mode in the OIP. Should only take an extra 10 seconds per fixture type, especially if they're all going to be the same mode.

What sort of object are you using for your floor? I can't reproduce that at all. Here's what I get with the demo scene in Vision 2017 sp3:

To anyone viewing this topic, the latest version of Nomad works on both mac and pc on the same machine. I'm going to run some further tests to determine whether broadcasting to a different computer is possible. It appears as though I got a broken version back when I initially tested. For ETC users: Keep in mind that Vision uses a two-part addressing system that uses Universe and Channel. You can map whichever fields you want to be sent to Vision's Universe and channel in Vectorworks via File>Document Settings>Spotlight Preferences>Edit Vision Data Mapping. It is however, important to keep in mind that Vision's "Channel" refers to the 2nd part of the address, not the name of the fixture. Hopefully that clears up a bit of confusion, and thanks @RickRfor the input! Looks like I have some more tests to run.

The Vision menus are now integrated into Spotlight. So to export, you just go to File> Send to Vision. Or if you prefer an ESC, that can be found in File>export> Export ESC.

On a side note, this should be completely resolved with an update to sp3. (Vectorworks 2017 SP3, then Vision 2017 sp3)

Thanks for the clarification rick, but that appears to be windows. The user had asked about the Mac version. To my knowledge that still doesn't output artnet or sACN. I should have clarified that the Nomad does broadcast on windows. I'll double-check mac though, maybe I just got a few bad versions in a row while I was testing.

Hey guys, I spoke to anne on the phone and forgot to answer this post for those who may have had the same question. The ETC Nomad software does not output anything without the Nomad dongle. That article arose from earlier iterations of the "ETC Offline" software which pre-dates the Nomad. Currently, the Nomad will not broadcast any form of DMX to anything without a dongle or a wing. This is not implicitly stated anywhere on ETC's site that I've found.

Hey Scott! You can export your textures to vision from Vectorworks, they will appear in the same scale and quality as they do in Vectorworks, with the exception of transparency and reflections. Vectorworks now uses a Cinema 4D-based renderer, which would add a new layer of difficulty to implementing well in Vision. Lights in Vision are calculated as actual lights (falloff, particles in the beam, light wave interference, etc) so adding in the ability to bounce those lights could cause a bit of havoc on current gen GPUs. Maybe one of the engineers could weigh in on this, but I would expect if it could be added, rendering times would skyrocket. It would be akin to rendering a final quality renderworks with maxed out settings, plus the fact that you're rendering actual photometrically calculated lights. Hope that helps! If you haven't already, update to Vision sp3, as the textures come in much closer to final quality renderworks, without a performance hit now.

Yep, you would send to vision for the first file, then merge in subsequent esc files. You could also export all of them as esc files, file>open the first, then merge the rest. I don't often use the merge workflow but when I find it necessary, I like to export them all as esc files with a naming convention that helps. "Stage.esc, lights.esc, venue.esc," etc. As for a video for the workflow, that's a great idea! I'll see what we can do on that end, I'm sure writing up a guide on that wouldn't be too tough. The workflow sounds more complex than it actually is.

Hey Mark, I usually just change the hanging angle in the object info palette before converting to a lighting position, I find that's definitely the easiest way of going about making vertical or sloped positions.

Hey there! The Vision and Spotlight libraries have been merged. To add a fixture now, just add the fixture you want from the resource manager, give it a fixture mode in the object info palette that matches the mode you want to use, then file>send to Vision. You don't need to run edit Vision data anymore unless you're changing gobos/colors on conventional fixtures, and there is no more separate library to maintain.