Topic: What 's old is new again!

[James]

Agent-C described it to me.

Imagine if you had a sensor that could detect the tiniest changes in barometric pressure. If you read a continuous stream of data from the sensor, you will see it rise and fall. It might as well be thought of as random, but, the barometric pressure at any given point in 3D space is relative to all of the points in space that are close to it, and those points are in turn relative to others, and so on.

That's a pretty crappy explanation! 

Check this out!

http://akrobiz.com/laserboy/forum/index.php/topic,102.msg812.html#msg812

On the other hand..... I have some tricks to show off at SELEM that should make a couple of people involuntarily crap in their pants! 

James. 

[Fanny Pack]

Do your tricks involve sheep? 

[James]

Hmmmm. I guess that all depends on what you mean by "sheep" ! 

James. 

[tribble]

What's the maximum number of vertices you can put in a frame? I ask because I was able to create a frame with 15,000 vertices  but one with 15331 causes LB to crash when it tries to load the file.


I guess I could create more frames with fewer points... but I'm just curious what the limit is.

[tribble]

I take it back... it's not the number of points... I tried a new location for a vertex and I must have used the wrong format.


I'm doing


frame xy hex
0 0 0xffffff
...
-0.8 -0.8 0xffffff


and it didn't like that. I tried integers...


-20000 -20000 0xffffff


and it didn't like that either.


What's the right format, again? :-)

[James]

Did you try exporting some frame information as text and looking at that as an example?

Can you tell me more about what you are trying to do?

Did you notice a file called stdout.txt in the same folder as LaserBoy.exe after you run it?

It might tell you something about what went wrong.

James. 

[tribble]

OK, sorry for the delay. Been under the weather this weekend and trying to balance the household chore list, lasers, and extra sleep.

So I figured out that my problem was that I had accidentally copied my header row from Excel, where I am building some test frames, into the text file, and LB didnt' like that. So, my bad.

What I am trying to do... I am trying to assemble a laser show for a short song using LaserBoy. But, I think some of the "simple" things I want to do maybe are not so simple after all. I will walk through it.

The difficulty I am having can be summarized as "trying to overlay different graphics elements into a frame set while maintaining strict control over timing." What does that mean?

It's like this. The song I'm playing with starts with some nice arpeggiated lines with short synth notes, very evenly spaced. In WavePad I determined the period of the notes to be 141.3ms, about 7 notes per second. At my estimated Spencer speed of about 15,500 points per second, that gives me a little over 2,200 points per note to play with. I figured that was a good candidate for some dancing dots; a dot would come on at the start of the note, then go off, and then come on again nearby at the start of the next note. So I figured I would light the dot for maybe 300 points and blank it for 1900 points. I created this frame, imported it, fixed the palette, made it 3D, copied it a bunch of times, and exported it... and it played pretty well! I was pretty happy.

So then I said, gee, there are some slow-changing chords coming in here behind the arpeggios, so I'd like some slow-moving hypocycloids rotating in time with the chords. I'll just use the overlay feature to put the dots and the other graphics frames together. UHOH.

There are 1900 points "available" each note to draw other things besides the dancing dot for each note. But, I don't see how to automate the combining process to preserve the timing of the dots. I can change the black dwell and dot dwell settings, and other settings, but short of manually calculating how many points are in each frame, how many are lit-dot, how many are left over, and how many the other graphics take, and building each frame in Excel or a different app and THEN importing it, I don't know how to get it done. And, while that process may technically work, it would be like building the Canterbury Cathedral out of pez. It would take FOREVER.

So. Maybe you can tell me what the 'right' way to do what I'm trying to do is. Thanks!

[James]

Well....... First you need to get about 14 million packages of PEZ.

I can't really tell you much about how to use some DAC I have no experience with, but.....

Did you know that you can overlay one frame set with another in LaserBoy?

If you have two frame sets and you want to lay one over the other, you open the first one and then open the second one with the "5 superimpose frame(s) into frame set" option.

If each frame set is already optimized the way you want it, then each frame will be composed of the first frame set's frame followed by the second frame set's frame. Then the only thing you need to know is that the blank line that connects the last point of the first frame set's frame to the first point of the second frame set's frame will not be optimized. You can fix this by adding span points along the blank lines in menu h option o or O for all frames.

If you compose all your frames together and then optimize, LaserBoy will reorder the segments and probably screw up the timing of events you worked to achieve.

In LaserBoy, to optimize or minimize is actually to apply a series of steps in a specific order. You can apply those steps individually with some thought. That's why they are available to you as individual options.

James. 

[tribble]

Thanks for the feedback, James! I don't think the specific DAC used will affect the relative timing of the frames or the frame set process. Even if the frame set were exported to a WAV, it would have the same points and same timing.


Yes, I've played with the overlay option. It's quite nice, I like it a lot! I used it to create the "skyline fireworks" ild file I posted over at PL. I combined the fireworks ild with the skyline frame and I think it came out lovely. I also use it to create "counterrotating" figures. I use the rotate effect to produce the counterclockwise rotation, then trim out the rotations in the other axes, then import and overlay to have superimposed clockwise/counterclockwise rotating shapes.


Is there a feature in LB that allows you to optimize a frame set such that each frame has a specified number of points? E.G., if you set it to 2500, you could optimize the normal way, and then just add a bunch of blank points to bring it up to 2500.


Actually, it might not be that hard to do that frame by frame by hand. If I create a dot frameset, and then a graphic frameset, and a "long blank point" frameset, I can overlay all three and then use delete enough blank points to bring me to the desired number. Hmm, I think I will try that and see how onerous it is.


I also owe you a test of the spencer effect. I will do that now.