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Strong recommendation for Xlights, I used to program patterns for my dreamcoat. I started with a 3D scan of me wearing the costume using my wife's iPhone when

by loufe 3y ago

Strong recommendation for Xlights, I used to program patterns for my dreamcoat. I started with a 3D scan of me wearing the costume using my wife's iPhone when the first version with LIDAR came out. After cleaning up the scan (iPhone 12 LIDAR wasn't the best quality) in Blender, I spent a good many hours in Xlights placing every single light at its correct 3D position using the imported mesh as a reference. Laborious work, but with all 1300-odd WS2811 LEDs mapped in all 3 axes, it makes for a pretty beautiful product. Using Xlights is great. For open source it's pretty smooth. There's a small learning curve for the technology, but making sequences a strong resemblance to video editing. The project has frequest updates, I haven't seen any project-breaking format changes in the 3.5 years I've used it, and it's clearly maintained by people who use it. Push new rendered sequences to my FPP-running raspi on the costume through wifi then editing the running playlist through a web interface on FPP on the laptop is a dream. If anyone's curious: FPP: https://github.com/FalconChristmas/fpp https://github.com/FalconChristmas/fpp My dreamcoat sequenced to Holst's Jupiter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWzdUJsAMa4&pp=ygUNbGVkIGRyZWFtY29hdA%3D%3D https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWzdUJsAMa4&pp=ygUNbGVkIGRyZ... Timelapses of me making the costume: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PODWVIsqwwA&pp=ygUNbGVkIGRyZWFtY29hdA%3D%3D https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PODWVIsqwwA&pp=ygUNbGVkIGRyZ...

Gabrys1 3y ago
What's Xlights? I found the website and your recommendation inspiring, but at the same I have no idea what this thing actually is...
- loufe 3y ago
  Sorry if this is too verbose, but here's my attempt: XLights is nearly a one-stop-shop for your programmable LED lights. You map channels in the data streams you send to lights (handles many different data types), organize (for instance placing them in groups like left-arm in my case) and qualify them however you want (x,y,z position, etc.), and create "sequences" which are mappings in time of different pre-designed patterns to your previously configured model (for instance, a bar of light going left to right, a wavy undulating rainbow wave, etc.). With all that setup, you can render (compile to whatever data format the predetermined sequence of lights) you can play back on whatever device controls your lights.

by loufe 3y ago

Gabrys1 3y ago

What's Xlights? I found the website and your recommendation inspiring, but at the same I have no idea what this thing actually is...

loufe 3y ago
Sorry if this is too verbose, but here's my attempt: XLights is nearly a one-stop-shop for your programmable LED lights. You map channels in the data streams you send to lights (handles many different data types), organize (for instance placing them in groups like left-arm in my case) and qualify them however you want (x,y,z position, etc.), and create "sequences" which are mappings in time of different pre-designed patterns to your previously configured model (for instance, a bar of light going left to right, a wavy undulating rainbow wave, etc.). With all that setup, you can render (compile to whatever data format the predetermined sequence of lights) you can play back on whatever device controls your lights.