Jump to content

GDTF Forum

Continuous Pan/Tilt Functionality


Recommended Posts

  • 2 weeks later...

Hey Petr!

Nah, I'm talking about the location that the Continuous attributes are defined, as they seem to be under control right now, which per manufacturers, those are not a control function, they are still defined as a position attribute. What is the thinking behind this for putting it in the control attribute? As of right now, certain visualizers will not read this as an option with where it is attribute wise. 

Yea, we all understand that the builder is not a visualizer, which should be addressed  because anyone can make anything right now, and say it's "good" without checking it unless you have access to a physical MA3 somewhere which seems to be the ONLY piece of software that can read GDTF files that has a visualizer.  Things can get outta control fast it feels right now haha! 

Thoughts?

 

image.thumb.png.6b13392653575b43dc78b23126226208.png

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi Matt,

>Nah, I'm talking about the location that the Continuous attributes are defined, as they seem to be under control right now, which per manufacturers, those are not a control function, they are still defined as a position attribute.

The range of movement is in the PhysicalFrom/To attributes of channel functions:

<DMXChannel Geometry="Yoke" Default="128/1" Offset="1,2">
    <LogicalChannel Attribute="Pan">
        <ChannelFunction Attribute="Pan" DMXFrom="0/2" OriginalAttribute="Pan" PhysicalFrom="225.0" PhysicalTo="225.0" RealFade="3" Name="Pan">

Any channel can, through Mode Dependency, evoke another ChannelFunction with different PhysicalFrom/To range, e.g. 360°. We are also tracking a request to have a dedicated attribute to determine if rotation is +/- 180 , +/- 360° or continuous 360°.

 

I do not understand your second comment. We have been working on an open specification to actually allow people to make it possible to create visualizers, apps, control systems etc, or to use this data in already existing system. The builder is a tool to create GDTF files according to the GDTF specification, it is not an application to visualize the real result. I think the confusion here is free and open specification (free as in speech and beer) and free visualizers (free as free beer).

Hope this helps

Petr

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hey Petr!

Thanks for the response. This right here answered what I was looking for! 

3 hours ago, petrvanek said:

We are also tracking a request to have a dedicated attribute to determine if rotation is +/- 180 , +/- 360° or continuous 360°.

 

Disregard the second thing for now, it's a bigger picture topic that more light will get shed upon on hopefully in a week or so, but who doesn't love Free beer and wings!!! haha! 

Thanks for your thougts on this Petr! Hopefully one day we get to meet!

Cheers!

MattG

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

Hi MattG,

as Petr said we are tracking the request for attributes to describe continuous pan and tilt (and a set of other additional attributes). They are planned to be added with the next release of the GDTF specification.

Cheers,
Daniel 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 10 months later...
14 minutes ago, Paolo.Prolights said:

Hi everyone, there is some news regarding adding attributes to describe continuous pan and tilt?

Dear Paolo,

sure, this has been implemented in GDTF 1.1 as PanRotate/TiltRotate, released earlier this year as DIN SPEC 15800. These are attributes that have AngularSpeed as their Physical Unit, and you can already use them.

image.png.3f8f78f49329ce08520676f2c9a51315.png

image.png.61168ae352d9c2c462b1ace587e96806.png

The Builder will have this in version 1.4.x, which is currently being tested and will be released very soon.

 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You can. You should specify 1.1 header if you start using 1.1 attributes and other things

<GDTF DataVersion="1.1">

In the current builder, it will throw few errors, but it will open. You can see a work in progress file here: https://gdtf-share.com/user.php?name=Robe+Lighting+s.r.o.&page=fixtures&fixtureID=4202 This is not a  continuous rotation fixture, but it is a GDTF 1.1 file, so you can see what happens upon opening.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@petrvanek Glad to hear of an update! I'm curious, as MattG states above with regards to visualizations; what environment for visualizing do/are you utilizing? I ask because with the latest version of the builder...I'm using MA3 as a checker/visualizer since it is, without VW I believe, the only renderer of .GDTF files.  I'm not suggesting that a visual upgrade is needed to the assembler[it's great!], I'm just wondering how these things are checked as the iterations roll out.

The TakeAway from this:

I took a newly generated GDTF file and Imported it into the current release of MA3 v1.3.1 and checked it against an Import into MA3 v1.0[same file] and there was an incredible offset with the Beam:Geometry location as compared to the Beam:Attribute[cone of light] location....devs take note? I'm fairly certain the chokepoint is within MA3 renderer.   I noted it here:

https://forum.malighting.com/thread/4571-current-version-of-ma3-reading-current-version-of-gdtf/?postID=11060#post11060

CrazyOffset+Size.png

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Strange, but true...that the same file was read in different ways?!?

I went ahead then and constructed the entire fixture in MA3, and it all rendered out well--using the same 3DS files that came in with the GDTF Import. I like the ChannelSet range entries in MA3, you only need to input the beginning of the range, the end is automagically configured. Although, it takes about 5 times longer to construct a fixture within the console--scrolling with a tab and mouse is...ugh.  And if some entry fields are not edited, the console doesn't calculate the DMX and give the fixture a DMX footprint and thus is unviewable??  Very time consuming process, but you do get to visualize the resulting Attributes. There is always a give/take in our lives on this planet, no, or so it seems?? lol, at least for me...

I much rather like the UI for GDTF at the builder site...only took me about 20 minutes or so to run through all the Tabs and generate the fixture!  The live update on Geometry positioning is the real time saver, great work!  To visualize any edits in MA3, you need to leave the Patch and view the 3D Viewport, then go back into Patch to continue iterating...very tedious and slow.

 

Cheers!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Dear Petr,
I followed your directions regarding adding attributes with continuous pan and tilt and changed the header to 1.1. If I try to import this GDTF into MA3 I have two problems: the name is no longer displayed and the patch fails. Maybe I've made other mistakes, but I can't seem to figure them out. Could you please take a look at the file?

Thanks

Best Regards

Air6pix_DMX_CHARTS.pdf Prolights@Air6Pix@RevTest03.gdtf

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi @Paolo.Prolights,

issue with this GDTF file is that it is a compressed zip. A GDTF file shall be uncompressed zip.

After I removed the compression the parser of the grandMA3 library correctly parsed the name of the fixture.

I can recreate that patching the fixture fails in grandMA3. I have to take a closer look what is the reason for this behavior.

Kind regards,

Daniel

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi everyone,

thanks Daniel for your clarification. I followed your instructions on a file with a different revision than the one uploaded earlier in this conversation and actually the name is

now displayed correctly; even for the patch I have no more problems. Can anyone tell me if the PanRotate and TiltRotate functions are currently implemented in the 3d of

MA3 as per GDTF 1.1 specifications? I added the attribute and live the fixture works correctly but I don't see continuous Pan and Tilt in 3d. I attach here the fixture that I am

testing in this regard.
 

Thank you
Best regards

Paolo

Prolights@Air6Pix@TestingMoreMode2.gdtf

Link to comment
Share on other sites

16 hours ago, LxLasso said:

Hi,

Uncompressed! Woah. That was easy to miss.

What's the reason for this choice?

The GDTF needs to be packed somehow, zip without any further computational overhead is a better choice then for example a tar, that would be harder for Windows users to use. The builder doesn't care when opening if compression is applied or not and from what i know MA (Daniel would need to confirm) will open them in the future too.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi,

I wouldn't argue for another container format over zip, but to explicitly say in the spec that the zip is to be uncompressed is something that is guaranteed to be overlooked. I think most developers will assume regular deflate compression is to be used. Given that both 3DS and XML are rather bloaty formats, a little bit of deflate is healthy.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 months later...

I fully agree with LxLasso here. The specs really must permit files to be compressed with deflate.
In fact, it's usually faster if they are compressed - the CPU usage cost is almost always much smaller than the extra data transfer time, even on SSDs!

"Uncompressed ZIP" is also something that is not well tested in ZIP libraries.

We've already noted that Vectorworks 2019 thru 2021 SP2.1 are creating invalid files with an incorrect ZIP size attribute.
Some extractors don't notice (eg Windows and macOS built-in), while others like 7-Zip do and report that the file is corrupt.

This is almost certainly because the ZIP library VWX is using wasn't properly tested in this mode.

Edited by RichTea
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 year later...
On 11/20/2019 at 7:58 PM, mgeasey@clearallvisualsllc.com said:

Hey Petr!

Nah, I'm talking about the location that the Continuous attributes are defined, as they seem to be under control right now, which per manufacturers, those are not a control function, they are still defined as a position attribute. What is the thinking behind this for putting it in the control attribute? As of right now, certain visualizers will not read this as an option with where it is attribute wise. 

cialis super active

Yea, we all understand that the builder is not a visualizer, which should be addressed  because anyone can make anything right now, and say it's "good" without checking it unless you have access to a physical MA3 somewhere which seems to be the ONLY piece of software that can read GDTF files that has a visualizer.  Things can get outta control fast it feels right now haha! 

Thoughts?

 

image.thumb.png.6b13392653575b43dc78b23126226208.png

thanks for this forum i just find what i was looking for

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Please sign in to comment

You will be able to leave a comment after signing in



Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.