New Moving Head Feature - Usage, Issues, TODO list

[AzGilrock]

Hopefully this is a good spot to list the status of the new Moving Head branch "moving_head_adv".

Testing Info:
If you are building this branch to test you may need to copy the SimpleMovingHead folder/objects into a "meshobjects" folder since that would normally be done by our installation. It should be the same location that holds the MovingHead3D mesh objects for the exisiting moving head.

Completed Work:

• Removed the "Moving Head 3D" option and perform an upgrade of that model to the new model. The new model should be able to work exactly the same. This upgrade will need to change the mesh objects so that it looks like the original 3D head so the user won't see a change. The new model has the capability to change all 3 mesh object so it can be customized to anything the user wants to create an OBJ for.
• Got the ColorWheel features working. I have a color wheel panel started that will dynamically draw a color wheel I had planned to use. Not sure how to coordinate things if a user has a mixture of different heads. It looked like the color wheel ability has a function that can lookup the wheel setting for a particular color so I was hoping we could initially get that working so that the normal color selection panel would define a color then the SetPixelDMXModel function in RenderBuffer could make that call for heads that have a color wheel.
• Added model Import/Export logic. Using new XmlSerializer code using a visitor design pattern. The export logic might not handle all the extra stuff I model might have but I don't see moving heads needing things like submodels so it should be good enough for initial release. The import logic not designed the way I want yet because the XML is so intertwined throughout the program and needs a big overhaul.
  -Added a couple path presets for the user to have available. These get saved in a new "mhpresets" folder in the show directory.

TODOs:

• Create ability for special head features to be utilized. Again we need to deal with the possibility of different head styles in the same group. Maybe don't show a feature unless they all have it? I already have the ability to create a feature set. You define a feature, then define channels for the feature, then define channel ranges for the functions available for that channel. Basically you create something that looks like the channel specification for the head. Then new control panels would dynamically show up based on the functions that have been defined.
• For the feature/channel/range definitions allow the user to add Images like what the gobo shapes look like so it can be displayed in the control panel when selecting the functions.
• Fix glitches listed in next section.

Glitches:

• If you click on the effect and move it up or down in the grid it can lose the "Per Model Default" buffer style which is required for the effect to work properly when in a group. There is code in tabSequencer near line 1288 for EffectDroppedOnGrid that automatically fixes the render buffer when you drop an effect. Need to figure out all the other conditions like moving up/down and pasting that might require the same correction. It really stumps you (even me many times) when you are moving settings and nothing is happening.
• After adding presets my effect window was so tall I could not scroll all the way to the bottom but sometimes after working with the effect it seems to correct itself.
• I could not get the panel resizing to work well when you drag the divider to the right so I think its a fixed size right now. I'd like a minimum size that can grow. Not sure I want the position grid to grow much cause then it get as tall as it is wide and the effect window becomes hard to use cause you gotta scroll.

Notes:
There are 8 hidden textboxes that store the settings for each moving head. When the checkboxes at the top are selected that defines which heads settings will get updated.

Model Setup:

• Define most of the parameters the way you would for the existing moving head 3D model
• Use the "Orient to Zero" parameters to get the pan/tilt positions in layout to make the head look like it does when its commanded to 0 which is usually the bootup position.
• We want to define a Common starting position with the head point Up and facing Forward. All commands will be relative to that starting position I call the "Home" position. So we have a Zero position and a Home position.
• You define the Zero position by viewing the layout and you define the Home position by creating a blank sequence and dropping a Moving Head Effect on the head. Click the center of the position grid so that it will latch a Pan=0 Tilt=0 command into the heads settings. If the head is not pointing Up and Forward then you need to adjust the degrees in the Orient Forward and Orient Up parameters for the pan/tilt motors. Just change the settings and come back and click on the effect to see it change. If you use an old school effect to position the head you should see how it points to the Zero position when commanded to Zero whereas the Moving Head Effect should apply the Home position offset.

Parameters:

• Fixture: You need to set the fixture position for each head MH1 through MH8. This teaches xLights where each head is positioned so that when you tell it to do a Fan it know how to space out the heads. You can assign more than one head to a position if desired.
• PanMotor:
  Channel (Coarse): Required.....define the main pan channel
  Channel (Fine): For 16 bit heads. The Fine channel is optional and can be set to 0 to disable.
  Min Limit (deg): Limit how many degrees the head will pan to the left starting from facing forward
  Max Limit (deg): Limit how many degrees the head will pan to the right starting from facing forward
  Range of Motion: How many total degrees does the head pan when commanded from 0 to 255
  Orient to Zero: Number of degrees to spin the head so it matches the position when commanded to 0
  Orient Forward: Number of degrees to spin the head from its Zero position so it faces forward
  Slew Limit (deg/sec): Number of degrees your head can move per second to try to make the screen match reality
  Reverse: Check this box if your head moves counter-clockwise when commanded from 0 to 255
  Upside Down: Check this box if you head is mounted inverted
• TiltMotor:
  Channel (Coarse): Required.....define the main tilt channel
  Channel (Fine): For 16 bit heads. The Fine channel is optional and can be set to 0 to disable.
  Min Limit (deg): Limit how many degrees the head will tilt backwards from facing up
  Max Limit (deg): Limit how many degrees the head will tilt forwards from facing up
  Range of Motion: How many total degrees does the head tilt when commanded from 0 to 255
  Orient to Zero: Number of degrees to spin the head so it matches the position when commanded to 0
  Orient Up: Number of degrees to spin the head from its Zero position so it faces up
  Slew Limit (deg/sec): Number of degrees your head can move per second to try to make the screen match reality
  Reverse: Check this box if your head moves counter-clockwise when commanded from 0 to 255
  Upside Down: Check this box if you head is mounted inverted
• Most other properties are similar to the previous moving heads
• BaseMesh, YokeMesh, HeadMesh: These can be used to change the OBJ objects used to draw the head.

Moving Head Effect:

• If you place the effect on a model group that contains moving heads you will see 8 checkboxes for the fixtures. I believe it greys out any boxes for which you haven't assigned a head.

• The settings you adjust will only be applied to the heads you have selected at the top.

• Use the All, None, Even, Odds buttons to quickly change the head selections or just click the boxes you want.
  Position Tab:
  Grid: The grid can be used to quickly change the Pan and Tilt values. You will see the slider update as you move.
  Pan: This will pan all selected heads. This also works as an offset to any other commands like Fan and a Path.
  Tilt: This will tilt all selected heads. This also works as an offset to any other commands like Fan and a Path.
  Fan Pan: This sets the number of degrees to fan each head in the pan direction.
  Fan Tilt: This sets the number of degrees to fan each head in the tilt direction.
  Groupings: Divides the selected heads into groups of 1 through 6. So if you have 8 heads with a grouping of 2 then the first
  4 heads will fan and the second 4 heads will fan. Heads 1 and 5 will point the same direction and so on.
  Cycles: Change the motion speed of a head.
  Presets: Presets can be saved and an icon will be created to quickly recall those settings. It will try to draw a representation
  of the angle the heads are pointing and their colors.

  Pathing Tab:
  Draw paths the same way as the Sketch effect. I had to make some improvements to allow a path to close properly.
  Scale: You can draw a circle and then use the Scale slider to make the head move in a smaller or larger circle.
  Time Offset: This will stagger each selected head so they aren't all in the same position on the path.
  Ignore Pan: Ignores the pan part of the path
  Ignore Tilt: Ignores the tilt part of the path
  Presets: Presets can be saved and an icon is generated that can be clicked to quickly recall the path settings.

  Control Tab:
  Color Tab:
  Click anywhere in the color circle to select a color for all selected heads.
  You can click and drag the circle around to change the color.
  If you Shift-Left click you can define additional circles and a number appears inside the circle.
  Multiple circles will cause the effect to do a colorwash through the selected colors.
  Click a circle and press the delete key to remove one.
  The color bar at the bottom can be used to dial down the brightness of the selected color.

Screenshots:

[cybercop23]

@AzGilrock IDK if you want it here or open an issue or even a deparate discussion for go-time issues.. but...
Just installed via TestFlight on a Mac and my 2 MH (or even brand new ones) are in a group but only have control for one.

[AzGilrock]

Did you assign the second one to the "MH2" fixture position under parameters?

[cybercop23]

Ahhhh.. Fixture number.. I did now and working. Thank you.

[AzGilrock]

Its described under the parameters section up top of this discussion. It was the only way I could teach xLights how the heads are positioned so that it can calculate Fan offsets and other position dependent things. You could run all the heads as MH1 in a group and they will all do the same thing.

[cybercop23]

Wondering if we shouldn't do the same when we create/copy/paste the same model.. increment it by one. Unlikely they want all as one

[AzGilrock]

I don't know. I know when I copy paste I can end up dragging them into different positions than the order I pasted them in. There's another little hidden gem in my branch. I removed the Y offset when pasting models. It always irritated me when I was trying to copy models on the ground. In most cases you want the same Y value when pasting a model.

[derwin12]

Did you intend to bundle in those 2 .mxh presets into the release? Doesnt seem they got there.

[AzGilrock]

Well I have no idea how to put them in the release if they didn't make it. I updated the .iss file and copied the way all the other objects are added.

[marklancer]

Confirmed the latest nightly works correctly with the mesh and existing sequences.

A couple of questions:

1. What do you believe would be the best practice for turning the MH lights on and off with the MH Advance effect? It appears we could use a single strand set to the dimmer channel. Basically following the "Tom Betgeorge" method for sequencing heads but only for the dimmer.
2. Is there is a way to hide the meshes without removing the path to the actual file? There was a check box in the past to allow users to display the head or not.

Thanks,
-Mark

[AzGilrock]

For 1: It probably has to be outside using different effects for now. I have ideas how to have a Dimmer tab but its going to be a lot more work and I didn't want to wait forever to release this.
For 2: No other way to hide them. The old head you had no way to remove the meshes I figured if people don't want to see the head then don't have meshes. I like seeing them they are in the real show. If it doesn't look like your heads you can always draw new ones.

[marklancer]

Thanks... I figured we will plenty of questions in the Zoom Room once the release comes out so I want to make sure I have the correct answer.

[AzGilrock]

I'll probably just add it. When I first wrote it I didn't plan to try to upgrade the old models.

[AzGilrock]

The DmxMovingHead still has the HideBody option. I don't think the DmxMovingHead3D ever had that option.

[AzGilrock]

@marklancer So I found an easy way to hide the Mesh objects. Not sure if people would think its too much work but each mesh has a Brightness parameter so set that to 0 and it disappears.

[derwin12]

And just a note that 3 of us faced immediate crashes of xlights on restart when there was presets. I saw one quick glimpse of an error having to do with wxwidget bitmaps of the mh previews? or something like that. Didnt get a dump or anything. We will try to reproduce. The way to fix it was to remove the .mxh presets.

[marklancer]

Doing some testing and I have a question regarding the Pan and Tilt Fans. I created a sequence using 8 heads and then imported into a layout with 6 heads. It looks like the Fans retain the number of heads it the original sequence (screen shot below) so the fan is no longer centered.

If I go the position tab and activate all 6 heads and re-enter the Pan/Tilt value then it becomes centered and the number of heads in the Status panel changes to 6. Should/can the head count be changed upon import?

[AzGilrock]

I'll see if I can make the effect deal with that but not sure how it will go thinking of all the possibilities. People can have effects that might have a head list like 2,3,5,7

[AzGilrock]

Yeah I probably wouldn't go off and start creating sequences with plans to share them yet. Gotta figure out how to deal with effects pasted/imported etc. that were created with a different headset. Its even an issue pasting between different single head models. Sure would have been nice for someone to find this before the concrete dried.

[AzGilrock]

I've spent a bunch of time trying to decide the best way to deal with this. Its not just sequence imports that are an issue. Someone could be applying a preset which is essentially a copy/paste operation. So someone could potentially have different groups in the same layout like a group with heads 1,2,7,8 and be pasting an effect from a group with 1,2,3,4. I could try to eliminate the whole idea of assigning the fixture IDs manually and try to have xLights do it. If we could guarantee the model order in a group always stays in the order you put them in the group I could use that to define the order. Only problem left would be dealing with more than 8 heads. I tend to lean towards forcing people to not have groups larger than 8 heads. I don't think anyone that has more than 8 has them all in row. The dialog gets too messy trying to support more. It would mean losing real estate just to draw another 8 checkboxes and 8 more hidden textboxes to hold the commands just for the 3 crazy people that have more than 8.

[computergeek1507]

I was thinking we could add "fixture id mappings" to the important dialog or make a new dialog just for DMX import and mapping

[AzGilrock]

Yeah fixing it on import probably handles 90% of the problems. Some of the other scenarios are weird off-nominal cases. Not sure why anyone would be creating sub groups of heads and copying effects between them. Probably deserve to have issues if doing that.

[marklancer]

Updated to the most recent nightly and it looks like the Dimmer Channel on the MH's got reset to Channel 0. Perhaps this was necessary to implement some of the updates but if it wasn't, just pointing it out.

[AzGilrock]

The problem is they were defaulting to channel 1 and 2 so if that’s the channels you used and had never set them then yes they could have changed. They were already conflicting with other default channels in the head. I’d rather people just set them. Plus read comment below cause you might not want to use that dimmer inside the color section. I didn’t like how it was married to the filter wheel but I don’t have a good way to fix it so just leave that one set to zero and define the channel on the other one if you want independent control of the dimmer.

[marklancer]

A couple more things I found:

1. the color wheel channel got reset to Channel 0
2. Dimmer channel shows up under the Color Wheel as well as under Dimmer properties however changing in one spot does not change it in the other

[AzGilrock]

There’s 2 ways to do the dimmer channel. One was already tied to the filter wheel class so if you want to use the dimmer feature in the Moving Head effect don’t use that one cause that one gets controlled automatically when colors are selected for the color wheel. Just leave the channel zero turns it off. So it didn’t reset to zero.

[cybercop23]

Lets talk Shutters.... Gil, what's your view on how these shoud work?
The bigger MH have a shutter channel that needs to be turned on/off, and from my understanding on how folks do it to extend its life, is they turn it on (open) at the beginning of the sequence and off at the end and use dimmer to manage the rest. Currently you create a CB and point it to the shutter channel and place an On effect for the duration of the sequence. Seems pointless to have to create that CB (and one for Dimmer... more on that later). We can do a model download to help people with those 2 CBs but can/should there be a shutter option on the new effect that you can put below the main MH effect, Layer Blend Additive and strech that for the whole duration of the sequence, as to not turn it on and off with each effect.
Thought or suggestions on how to better and efficiently support this?

[AzGilrock]

I have a couple way to do it just deciding. People can still use a separate model to control the shutter like they've already been doing. Nothing should need to be set to additive blend anymore because the moving head effect should never overwrite any channels its not controlling which is different than how the DMX effect worked. Dimmer is already supported now.

[cybercop23]

Yeah, trying to keep things simple and easy for new folks and not having to deal with the same issues/question non-stop in the zoom. Totally agree that we can keep it as it is now, and if you want to keep it that way, that's just fine. Don't want to do anything that may affect your ideas and your vision on how things shoud work.
If you want to keep it as it, we were thinking of creating some default models that people can download. We'd have 16 models each with 8 (or 10 or 12) MH tying to all possible channels and then the user can just change the number of heads to what they have.
Alternatively, but more (unecessary) work, add a new DMK item to the menu that will prompt for the number of heads (or find what's defined) and channel (or get it from config) and create the necessary CB or SS, whatever we decide.

[cybercop23]

Now its starting to fall into place.... per #4576 and what you said above, if you add Shutter to the effect... like the dimmer.. heck maybe even in that panel, we can turn it on, on one layer and do the rest as we need, no?

[AzGilrock]

Yes you could drop a moving head effect that only sets the shutter channel

[idleup]

Is there a way to add a delay to the Moving Head effect? The preview model starts movement faster than the actual head so my MH is always behind what the preview shows. The slew is correct and it matches the speed when they are both moving, its just the initial start is always behind. For the purpose of sequencing to the music I can adjust the effect to compensate for the delay but the problem is my preview never matches.

[jeholla]

One of the presenters for the Virtual Christmas 2024 on advanced moving heads mentioned doing a short effect at the beginning of the sequence to put the heads into the zero position. I think it was just dropping an on effect, no colors, etc for a couple seconds. This will put the head from the rest position into the starting position (most being straight up) ahead of when you want the head to actually start in the sequence. Hope that makes sense. There are two presenters that have videos from the Christmas summit. I dont remember which one it was, but both were helpful and had some great tips for the new features of advance moving heads.

[idleup]

Yes, I do that as well. The problem is that the delay is for every effect done on the MH. There is no way around it short of adding a delay to the preview as the delay is the time the motor responds to a move command vs. the MH preview which starts movement immediately when the playhead in the sequencer hits the MH effect.