Step-by-step guide for creating a light show with 4 Acme Dyn

[tomrbland]

FOREWORD
New Users, if you find this in the forum please don't use this tutorial to get yourself started. I am in the process of writing one that goes in to much greater detail, is clearer and has been read more than once to get rid of any mistakes! Whilst writing this tutorial I have found various mistakes in the software's language and I am currently writing a language pack that will (hopefully be implemented in to the software) so that the button names make more sense. My coming tutorial will also use a variety of fixtures that you can see in 3D and we will create a 3D environment.

For this Demo I was using V6.27 with no fix files. (Always ensure that you are using the most current version of the software with all the fix files) - I am also quoting the original language files.


TUTORIAL
Install sweetlight and the drivers for your hardware device.
Start the program "Control Board"
As a first start it, is good practice to begin with a blank light show named and saved.
So, open from the "Control Board" the program "Setup" (top left icon).
It opens, by default to the "lightshow" Tab. If yours hasn't then simply choose the tab "lightshow"
We want a new light show, so we press the button that says "new light show"
Type "Acme Dynamo Demo" in the pop-up and then press "ok".
Above the "new light show" button there is a drop down menu, select our new lightshow from this menu - open the menu and click "Acme Dynamo Demo"
Take a moment just to check the other settings for your light show:
Select the Tab "Other" make sure that the quantity of universes reads 1, the bar graph frequency is high, the streaming frequency is high and the two check boxes are unticked.
Now press the button "valid settings".
Press ok to the pop-up.

In order to make a light show we have to tell the software what fixtures we want to control and what DMX addresses they are set to.
Open, from "Control Board" the program "Setup" (bottom left icon)
At first, this looks fairly daunting. It's quite simple really. There are two tabs "fixtures setting" and "dmx addressing".
In the "fixtures setting" tab choose the "Import fixture" Icon - looks like a standard open file icon.
Open the folder "Acme" and select the "DYNAMO" - press "Open"
Swap to the "dmx addressing" tab and double click the "DYNAMO"
In this window name your fixture "Dynamo" and press "Save". A new entry will appear in the DMX addressing window.
Now right click the fixture that we just created in the DMX addressing window.
Select "Duplicate".
Enter 3 duplicates and press "ok"
Now right click the first Dynamo and select "Edit" and name it "Dynamo#1" so that it fits in with the duplicates.
You can now close setup.

Now setup the fixtures in real life, power to each and then DMX signal from your sweetlight/showxpress interface to the first Dynamo and linking them all together ending at the 4th.
You now need to set the DMX addresses of your Dynamos to 1, 5, 9 and 13 respectively. You can find out how to do this in the Dynamos manual.

From "Control Board" Open the program "editor" (2nd in from the bottom left).
Here is where we create "scenes". Scenes are 'looks', they are a set of instructions to make your fixtures do certain things.
From a first look we can see the 4 dynamos in the top right of the screen - this is called the "2D View". Along the bottom there are 2 Tabs, the first Tab called "All Channels" shows a fader for every DMX channel for the 512 in your one universe, it's like a giant analogue lighting desk with 512 faders. I will cover one of the other tabs a little later in the tutorial. The box in the top left is for setting pan/tilt levels, and the middle section is for controlling and building the "scene" (hence this program used to be called "builder"!).
So now lets make your lights do something.

Along the top row of icons you will see a little red light with the text "dmx" below. Press this and the little red light will turn green.
Now click and drag a box around all 4 of your Dynamos in the 2D view window. You will see that they will all get a red square around them and the tab along the bottom of the screen will change to the tab "Groups". You have now selected a group of fixtures. Lets save this group so that we can select it quickly at a later date. to the right of the groups tab there is a white box that looks rather like part of a spread sheet. Right click in here and press "Add new group". Name the group "All Dynamos" and note the group key is "a" this can be changed to any of the 26 letters of the alphabet, capital or lowercase, giving you 52 possible groups! But for now lets stick with "a" press "Validate".
Now if you click anywhere in the 2D window, to de-select your dynamos, and then press "a" you will have re-selected your group of Dynamos.

Ok, now the fun bit, lets make the lights do something. With the Dynamos selected drag the shutter fader of one of the dynamos up to full. This has "Activated" this channel, it's important to remember that touching a channel activates it. This is important when you are creating complex scenes. But, if everything has gone ok then your dynamos should be emitting light!! Don't panic if they aren't, 90% of the time stuff doesn't work first time. Check that your cables are plugged up correctly, check that your interface is plugged in and is recognised by the software (if you don't have your cursor over the control board then it should be displaying "Interface OK" if it's not then check your drivers and that your interface box has the relevantt lights on etc.

So lets create a scene that we can play back.
Press the icon for a new scene - top left icon
Don't save the scene that you had just made.
Press "a" to select the group of dynamos.
Turn them on by dragging on of the shutter fades to full.
Now activate the pan and tilt within the scene. To do this simply drag the respective faders up and back down again.
First of all lets create a simple movement.
Take the Y fader and take it to about half way, leave the X fader at the bottom.
Now we need a new "step" to our scene. A scene is a series of steps that can create a nice look with moving fixtures or changing colours. Each step is a static look, and its moving between steps that creates the movement. So from the center of the Editor select the icon "add step" (in the center of the screen, icon to the furthest right). Note that we are now editing step 2 within our scene (you can see this because it is highlighted in the list in the center of the screen.
Now take an "X" fader and move it all the way to the top. This has created two steps. You can switch between them by selecting each one from the list in the center of the screen.

Lets play this scene. At the far end of the icons at the top of the screen there is a play arrow. Select this. So every 5 seconds your fixture will swap from side to side. This doesn't look very good. So press the play icon again, stopping the scene playing back and lets make the fixture move slowly from one side to the other. With the Dynamos and step 1 selected look below the faders for X and Y, you should see a little 'square wave' sign (looks almost like a backwards z). If you press this then the one below the X and the one below the Y should change to a ramp. If you do this for step 2 as well and then press play, you will see that the fixtures 'sweep' from one side to the other.

Now we have our first scene. Press the 'Save' icon - 3rd from the left of the top row of icons. Save the file as "Dynamos Sweep". You can now close "Editor".

It's all very well being able to open Editor and play back a scene, but how about in a live show? This is where we need the program "Live". From the controlboard launch "Live" - One along from Editor. This is the program where you will run all your shows from.

Click the button that reads "..." (to the right of "Page_1") and choose "add a light scene" from the menu and open the light scene that we just created "Dynamos Sweep". If you remember, in Editor, we had to turn the DMX output on before the lights would respond. It is the same in Live. In the bottom Right of the screen there are 2 little red icons. If you press the one named "dmx" it will turn green, this enables DMX output from "Live".

We can now click on our imported light scene once to turn it on and again to turn it off. You have created your first light show.

Obviously this can be much more complex but that is the very basic idea behind it. I hope that made sense, I have only skim read it to check it! If bits of it don't make sense then please let me know. Or if you need any more help please ask away.