Sequence help

[kproth]

I continue to struggle with how sequences work. Wondering if someone more experienced in the ways of QLC 4 can help me think about this in a different light. And maybe just typing this out will help me think about it better too!

I have a bunch of LED wash lights, all with dimmer channels and color channels. I want to define a variety of functions where I can set up a few scenes and fade between them in a loop. I know I can do that with Scenes + Chasers, but then I have a bunch of scenes I don't need for anything else, cluttering up the function list.

It seems like sequences are the better animal here, as I feel like I can build in however many "scenes" I need as steps. But I'm struggling with a couple of aspects and wondering if there's a better way.

First, I have my lights all setup in the default HTP mode. And because the first Step is essentially a "base scene" (if I'm thinking right - it's actually a hidden scene "behind the scenes", right?), it affects all the rest of the steps; so for example, if a color is set in step 1, it gets mixed with all other color changes in the rest of the steps. As a result, I'm trying to avoid setting any color in the first step. I define steps 2, 3, etc with each "look" I want, and appropriate hold times, and then I set a hold time of 0ms on the first step, and it "mostly" does what I want ... but the lights briefly drop out whenever it loops through that first step again. I find myself wishing I could "disable" the first step in the looping (i.e. it still functions as a base scene, but it wouldn't act as a distinct step as things are playing at runtime). Or do I just need to switch all channels to LTP if I want to use sequences?

Second, I know I can use Channel Groups to set the colors across sets of lights very easily, but those sliders on the Channel Groups tab do not reflect the last settings I made on a given step -- they don't change when I select a different step in design mode to reflect the settings I last applied to that step. Would it be a useful enhancement to "save" the channel group slider settings with each step they were applied to???

Is the easy button here to just live with having extra scenes and combine them into chasers, but use folders and a naming convention to identify which scenes are used in chasers?

What sorts of "real-world" use cases are sequences intended to solve? I.e., what sorts of change in sub-sequent steps is really intended to be used in sequences?

Thanks!

[Yestalgia]

I have a bunch of LED wash lights, all with dimmer channels and color channels. I want to define a variety of functions where I can set up a few scenes and fade between them in a loop. I know I can do that with Scenes + Chasers, but then I have a bunch of scenes I don't need for anything else, cluttering up the function list.

I'm guessing you've already tried folders?

My latest approach to programming QLC+ is to avoid making scenes altogether and instead, use 1-3 RGB Matrixes with corresponding Animation Widgets. You can create different presets there and use loopback to trigger them from a Chaser.

Hope this helps

[kproth]

I'm guessing you've already tried folders?

That's my fall-back plan.

My latest approach to programming QLC+ is to avoid making scenes altogether and instead, use 1-3 RGB Matrixes with corresponding Animation Widgets. You can create different presets there and use loopback to trigger them from a Chaser.

Can you share a simple example? I'm not sure what/where "Animation Widgets" are.

[Yestalgia]

https://docs.qlcplus.org/v4/virtual-console/animation

Checkout the above link. It's going to change the way you use QLC+

[kproth]

Thanks - I'll have a look-see into this. I would have to use loopback, because I have settled on using 1 button per song in our ice shows with its own "collection", and they live in a solo-frame so I can easily switch to any given song. As long as I can add something (a scene?) into the collection to turn on the animation widget (and get it to turn off again when that scene turns off with the next solo-button), then this sounds like a great approach.

Thanks again for the suggestion!