Importing GDTF and Vision fixtures

[Monkeypuzzle]

Hi all, hope things are going ok out there... I've got a bit of pre vis to do for a small venue and I'm struggling to get it all happy.

 

The fixtures are:

 

Chauvet Intimidator Spot 260 which I've had a fixture made by VW and sent through. This has come with the GDTF from the GDTF website it seems. They work as expected in Vision apart from the gobo which seems to do nothing. I've checked the GDTF file and it seems okay but I'm pretty new to it. Any ideas?

 

ADJ VIZI Beam 300. These again came from VW and seem to work okay.

 

Chauvet COLORado 1 Solo for which there is no VW or Vision fixture so I've had a play with the GDTF builder and made something that seems to work apart from when I move the zoom, every now and then the beam looks like it has a ring gobo in it. Also using the GDTF fixture doesn't seem to carry through the focus information either. If I set it to a "Solo 2" (as a VW fixture) then the focus point is correct but it's missing some features like zoom.

 

Oh and VW programmers, please, please, please, put a column in the fixture selection box showing the number of channels each mode uses. I know there are many ways of checking once I've loaded the fixture but when there are 6 or 7 personality types and they may or may not be correct just knowing how many channels are used in each personality would be ace.

 

And...... one final question, when I load an MVR file, if I select "use GDTF" instead of vision, where does Vision look for the GDTF fixtures? I think I've worked out that when I select "use Vision" it will use whatever is selected in VW. Is this correct?

 

Sorry, loads of questions there, any help much appreciated. 

 

Matt

[TomWhiteLight]

Hi Monkeypuzzle

 

I will let me colleagues respond about the non functioning gobo wheel and zoom functionality. I will share this link with them internally. Also I will add your DMX footprint (column) display feature request.

 

The Vision.Lit file takes precedence over the GDTf file so when a GDTF is not present it should be using a Vision.Lit file. Right click on the selected fixtures to assign a GDTF mode. To make sure fixtures are using the correct GDTF fixture type you can right-click a fixture type in the scene graph and select update fixture, this will take you to the GDTF builder from within vision.

 

Best wishes

 

Tom W

 

 

 

 

[Monkeypuzzle]

Thanks, that's all great. I'm going to have a look at GDTF files a bit better tonight and compare the ADJ I have that does display the gobo correctly and the Chauvet that doesn't and see if anything is different. The ADJ also has a problem with the shutter channel as it doesn't seem to respond correctly to the "Open" section of the range. GDTF seems great, the personality I made for the solo works perfectly with the zoom functioning as it should.

 

As for the GDTF builder, it seems that this isn't yet available for my Mac, is this correct? Oh and why are focus directions lost when I use GDTF fixtures?

 

Cheers, Matt

[jcogdell]

On 12/1/2020 at 1:47 AM, Monkeypuzzle said:

, when I load an MVR file, if I select "use GDTF" instead of vision, where does Vision look for the GDTF fixtures?

the MVR itself will contain the GDTF's needed as long as they have been correctly linked to the fixtures in Spotlight before exporting the MVR (using the GDTF fixture mode drop- down in the device properties).

you can look inside the MVR itself by changing the file extension to .zip , it is uncompressed. Inside you should have GDTF files for each fixture type. The DMX address, channel number and so on are in the General scene decription xml file which can be opened with any simple text editor or xml viewer.

 

On 12/1/2020 at 1:47 AM, Monkeypuzzle said:

when I select "use Vision" it will use whatever is selected in VW. Is this correct?

As long as you have correctly assigned a mode in the fixture mode drop-down. If there is no fixture mode assigned then the light will not appear in Vision and if the mode is not available in Spotlight then there is no lit file for that mode in Vision as each fixture mode is a separate file.

 

20 hours ago, Monkeypuzzle said:

 

As for the GDTF builder, it seems that this isn't yet available for my Mac, is this correct?

correct the builder is currently PC only

 

20 hours ago, Monkeypuzzle said:

why are focus directions lost when I use GDTF fixtures?

at the moment the MVR format doesn't support Spotlight focus points or focus information, if you want to use Spotlight focus data you will have to use the older ESC file format.

[bbudzon]

8 hours ago, jcogdell said:

On 12/1/2020 at 12:07 PM, Monkeypuzzle said:

 

As for the GDTF builder, it seems that this isn't yet available for my Mac, is this correct?

correct the builder is currently PC only

Just to be clear, the GDTF Fixture Builder is available at https://fixturebuilder.gdtf-share.com/ for both OSX and PC.

 

Accessing the fixture builder from inside of Vision does, indeed, only work from PC, however.

 

EDIT:

8 hours ago, jcogdell said:

On 12/1/2020 at 12:07 PM, Monkeypuzzle said:

why are focus directions lost when I use GDTF fixtures?

at the moment the MVR format doesn't support Spotlight focus points or focus information

Also, focus points should work with MVR when going from VW to Vision so long as the version of Vision is 2020 SP2 or newer. There was a bug introduced in Vision 2019 SP3, that we were able to ship a fix for in 2020 SP2 😉