Software Console and Focusing Conventionals

[DavidRoy]

Dealing with conventional units in Vision is cumbersome and time consuming, to say the least.  Perhaps there are things I'm missing, but here are the troubles I have:

 

Using the software console to focus instruments is great!! However, some fixtures in the vision library are missing required parameters.  (for example a 1k fresnel can spot/flood, but not a 650 fresnel). Also; If you have selected a range of instruments, changes in the software console do not change all selected instruments, only the first instrument in the list.  I would expect at worst all fixtures would jump to the parameter position selected in the console, but at best all fixtures would respond to changes in the software console as a modification of whatever their existing state is.  For example I could grad 4 fresnels, one spot one flood and two mid range, and drag the spot flood control in the software console to flood out all units or spot down all units proportionally with their existing state as the start point for the modification.

 

Similarly, it's very tedious to focus conventional instruments.  Yes "focus instruments here" command is useful in getting individual units close, but the vast majority of conventional instruments are utilized as systems in our industry.  Both Vectorworks and Vision are surprisingly ill equipped to deal with this.  For example if I have a system of 20 lights, it's most likely that I've laid them out such that they should all be tilted at 35º and panned 15º (or whatever suits the design).  To do this in Vectorworks and export to vision I need to double the work by making a FP for every single unit and individually assign those units to those FP.  In vision, I can select a range of units and choose the "focus instruments here" command, but what I actually want is to grab all units and tilt them up in unison, pan them to the left in unison, etc.  Navigating through the units to manually use arrow keys to focus the units is also tedious, as Vision does not recognize repeating keys; requiring me to mash the up and left arrow keys 50 times each FOR EACH UNIT to get to my desired goal.  

 

Complicating all of this, if I take the time to focus my units manually and discover a change that needs to be made in Vectorworks, I'll lose all those settings when I re-export from Vectorworks.  Yes I could save the scene, separate our layers, export just the changes from VWX and import just those changes to Vision, but that is extraordinarily tedious to manage on a user basis.  The "send to vision" command is great in VWX; we need some way to either make that communication bi directional or to store these manual changes and re-apply them to a new export.

 

Ladies; Gentleman....there's got to be a better way.  What am I missing?

And if I'm not missing something here....PLEASE let's take this thread as a feature request.  We've got to be able to let the computers computer here, as the current situation is massively labor intensive to the point that it's just not worth it for me to do it myself unless it's a labor of love.  I certainly can't charge a client for the hours of time it would take to make renderings in this manner.

 

Some suggestions:  

Pan+Tilt could be added to software console

Software console could affect all selected lights simultaneously

Vision could accept repeating keys for focus changes

Duplicate unit profiles could be made that give P+T+Electrician human console parameters, which would allow me to patch some dummy channels to control these items in the console and thus preserve focus changes through drawing changes, since the data is being stored in the lighting console and sent to vision via dmx.

Bi-directional communication between VWX+ESP to allow manual changes to be preserved, streamlining the creative process and preventing duplicate work.  OR: Manual focus data stored so it can be re-applied to new exports.

 

How else can this problem be solved?  Has it been solved somewhere and I'm just missing it?

 

Thanks

 

 

Late 2015 iMac

Quad Core i7 4Ghz

AMD Radeon R9 M395X 4GB

32 GB Ram

MacOS Mojave

VWX+Vision 2019 with all current updates as of posting.

Edited January 19, 2019 by DavidRoy
Add system specs

[bbudzon]

I know I'm digging up an old post here but there is some good information in here and I wanted to acknowledge that. I'll be making sure to pass these notes along to our product planner so they can gauge how we can fit this into our schedule. A few things I'd like to note:

 

On 1/19/2019 at 5:53 PM, DavidRoy said:

Pan+Tilt could be added to software console

 

This should already be possible in the code. So, I think we simply need to get the content updated to contain these parameters. I'll pass this along to our content guy 😉

 

On 1/19/2019 at 5:53 PM, DavidRoy said:

Software console could affect all selected lights simultaneously

 

I can't believe it's not already doing this! Thanks for pointing this out. We have some support for multiple selections so it shouldn't be too difficult in theory. The biggest caviet might be that this will only work when a homogenous selection of conventional fixtures is selected.

 

On 1/19/2019 at 5:53 PM, DavidRoy said:

Vision could accept repeating keys for focus changes

 

This was actually fixed in a recent release. I'm not sure which one, so I would just download 2019 SP3 as it was released a few days ago!

 

On 1/19/2019 at 5:53 PM, DavidRoy said:

Duplicate unit profiles could be made that give P+T+Electrician human console parameters, which would allow me to patch some dummy channels to control these items in the console and thus preserve focus changes through drawing changes, since the data is being stored in the lighting console and sent to vision via dmx.

 

I'll need to pass this along to someone who knows more about the entertainment industry than myself. I'm just a lowly computer programmer 😛

 

On 1/19/2019 at 5:53 PM, DavidRoy said:

Bi-directional communication between VWX+ESP to allow manual changes to be preserved, streamlining the creative process and preventing duplicate work.  OR: Manual focus data stored so it can be re-applied to new exports.

 

While this still isn't entirely possible, the new MVR importer in Vision will certainly help. I believe the way it is currently implemented you will lose your focus data. However, if you assign focus points in VW they will come over to Vision properly via ESC or MVR. I highly recommend using MVR though moving forward!

 

 

Hopefully this helps in some areas and gives you a clue as to what we are looking to address in future versions.

Thank you very much for your feedback. It is highly valued!

[DavidRoy]

 

44 minutes ago, bbudzon said:

I know I'm digging up an old post here but there is some good information in here and I wanted to acknowledge that. I'll be making sure to pass these notes along to our product planner so they can gauge how we can fit this into our schedule. A few things I'd like to note:

...

...

Thank you very much for your feedback. It is highly valued!

 

Thank you!  Glad to know this has been read and being processed, and that a couple of these suggestions were already implemented.  I'm not familiar with the MVR file export; as I've always shuttled data with the "Send to Vision" command.  I'll download the SP3 and check it out.

 

-David

[bbudzon]

25 minutes ago, DavidRoy said:

I'll download the SP3 and check it out.

 

 

Check out this post I made 😉 I hope you find it informative!