Vixen 2.1 addin thoughts

[ctmal]

So, I think I'm am going to want to use dimming curves next year but I'm still a Vixen 2.1 user. So, they're not available yet.

I'm tossing around the idea of creating an AddIn to handle dimming curves. It would be a fairly ugly implementation but it should work. I'm also curious if anyone else would have any interest in this. I know Vixen 2.1 users are dwindling but I also know there are many of us who don't use Pixels, and, well, Vixen 2.1 is perfect for what we do.

Here are my thoughts so far(my very rough thoughts).
From a user stand point, in a sequence, you would open the addin and you would select to use dimming curves. I have to read up a little on how others are handling it, but I am thinking you would apply dimming curves to a Channel. Select the type(which would actually be the dimming curve on how that strand reacts) and then select the type that you would like it to act like(which would be a dimming curve of another type.
So, for example, For Channel 1, you might select that the lights are LED's and you would like then to act as incans.
None of these settings would do anything while doing normal sequencing but when you are finished and ready for the final product, you would apply the dimming curves. This would then save off a copy of the events(as a backup) and then change the events to the calculated values.
The real ugly part is that if you wanted to some major changes to the sequence you would have to run the addin and undo the changes, make your changes, then apply the changes again when you are finished.
I guess for this implementation I would need dimming curves of how incans generally react and another of how LED's generally react. Does anything like that exist already? I've done some searching(no a lot) and I haven't seen any yet but I'm sure the information is out there.

In my mind it doesn't sound like a hard AddIn to write. The hardest part would be how to get the curves/how to make your own curves. Maybe even an import/export feature if others are interested.


Any thoughts?

 

[ppohlman]

I don't use pixels either, but I am running Vixen 2.5. From what I remember, it was very similar to 2.1. Just out of curiosity, why are you still on 2.1 vs. moving to 2.5, which has the dimming curves?

As for determining the curves, I would manually play with the intensities of the different lights in Vixen until I found the "ideal" maximum/minimum intensities that the lights would actually show. Obviously, this would largely result in linear shifts in the intensities instead of actual curves. But from what I was looking for, that was what I needed. When Vixen says 100%, it is visually at the max (instead of getting the maximum output at 75%).

Edit:
Here's a link to the 2.5 Dimming Curve Generator that I used to help create my curves. I assume you already saw that post and program to help generate the curves. I thought there was talk back then about creating a library of curves so we could share them. Not sure if that ever happened though.

 

[ctmal]

Thanks for the information. I just spoke with my brother and it looks like we will not need the dimming curves after all(we're going to move to 100% LED, which I didn't expect in 1 year).

But, if it will help anyone else out, I'm more than willing to make the AddIn, just let me know.