garageCube

[ghostofelvis100]

Hi everyone, hopefully this is not posted anywhere else.

Just started working properly with madlight, and forgive me if I'm wrong but it seems insane to have the video feed source for madlight be the input video feed, rather than the mapped output.

When I create a fixture, it appears on the input window, not the output. Hopefully I'm not the only one here?

This issue will be especially important when the new madline feature is ready, that's going to be vital to be fed through to the fixtures, but there seems no way to do it??? unless someone can shed some 'light' on a method for me.

I really don't want to have to video map my led strip with some stupidly high lumen beamer to make 'em flash...

Okay, so yes it is 'possible' to syphon feed the output of mm through m8 and back into mm to be viewed through the input, but seriously this is not a real option, particularly with multi pj.

???

[franz]

hi, what are you trying to achieve exactly ?
The idea behind mad light is to use video data to drive lighting - hence the fixtures being in the input space - .
If you don't use pixels to drive your lighting, just put the fixture outside the input canvas - on the black parts -

[ghostofelvis100]

Hey Franz!

I was actually trying to get the new madline to work on a dmx fixture. It seems perfect for working with LED strips, but there is no way to connect the two up (madline & madlight) without syphon.

It just appears to me that there would be so much more flexibility if mad light could take its source from the output.

Okay so if this were changed there will be the problem of legacy with everyone older projects running from the input, but could there be an option to source mad light from the output.

perhaps I wanna take a source of a small video input and duplicate it into a 16x16 array of quads to make a pixelating effect, and then apply this repetitive output to the input of the fixture. I can probably think of a billion other possibilities too, it would just open up a lot of really creative possibilities. Surely.

Madmapper is a powerful image manipulating tool. To have the fixtures source be the input video stream just means that we are losing all that power.

Will u be at full dome this weekend I could show you?

[franz]

the line primitive is intended to be projected on surface.
We plan a DMX Line fixture, with the same behaviours, in the future.
Meanwhile, you can do a loopback by enabling MadMapper syphon output.

in the terminal, type:
defaults write com.garagecube.MadMapper syphon_show_self 1

then mad mapper will appear itself in the input list if you enabled syphon output in the preferences
- so you don't need modul8 -
This is just a workaround tho'

[ghostofelvis100]

Lovely, that sounds like endless syphon feedback fun!

And yes, a dmx line fixture will indeed be useful and probably solve the problem, but it does not quite seem ergonomic enough for the user. Perhaps it makes for simple coding to have 2 separate entities, but it will be adding more layers of complexity to the users projects when surely 1 primitive could feed everything? The beauty of MM has always been its simplicity of use, but now we have the fixtures which are separated from our mappings. This is fine when working on installations which are either projection or dmx based, but for combined installations (using projection & dmx) things become totally integrated.

for another example:
- If I make a cube and trim the edges with addressable led, I would map the input video onto the cube which creates a 'virtual' anamorphic cube in the output.
- Let's say we duplicate the input source so that the same video is played on all layers of the cube. Perhaps we mirror some quads to add a bit of symmetry to the design.
- So now I want to make the video that is being projected onto the cube appear to trigger the led edges - the simple solution would be to add some line fixtures to the 'virtual' cube. But we cannot do this, so the alternative would be to make some crazy mapping of the input source with dmx fixtures layered on top of each other.
- Okay, so assuming I have made this project and I want to operate it. For simplicities sake, how about a single mute button to hide the projection and led. To achieve this I would make a group for the projection quads, and then another for the DMX fixtures. This gives me 2 mute buttons. I cannot group the fixtures with the mappings as they are in separate places/lists in MM. This means that I require some complex form of midi mapping and an external controller to trigger the 2 buttons.
- Next, I move the physical object about (perhaps for a different performance in a different venue). I can drag & resize my group of quads to fit, but I will then need to try and drag resize and fit the dmx fixtures group also as they will not be linked within the same group as they are in different places in MM!

Take a look at Cinema4D for example. There is one list of objects which contains many different types of object, and they can all follow the same hierarchy.

Okay so now imagine a more realistic stage set-up. I don't have one box with a bit of led on it because that would be pants, I have like 50 boxes all trimmed with led. Man, it's gonna take me ages to fiddle around lining up all my fixtures to my mappings. This is time wasted in the setting up of a show which could be much better spent at the bar...


Our video mappings are in the real world. i.e. the output video stream.
Our DMX equipment is in the real world also, and should therefore be linkable to the output video stream. It's just logical.

This issue runs deeper than simply applying madline to a fixture, it's about being able to integrate our fixtures with our mappings.

Don't waste development time developing another type of line fixture, open up the output video stream to the fixtures instead.