Fire effect with incandescents

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dvgmacdonald Posted: 04-04-2008 2:14 PM

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Hi All,

I'm embarking on a large pharos programming job.  I'll probably throw a bunch of these out there over the next few weeks. 

Here's my first conundrum.  I've got 12 circuits of incandescent lights, uplighting a dome.  3 each in yellow, amber, red & blue.  The designer is calling for the following:

• All circuits should be programmed for a fire flicker effect
• The flicker effect should have pronounced variation across the dome for a "rolling" fire.
• Blue should be aimed & programmed to be a higher intensity when red & orange are of lesser intensity to minimize any momentary purple or magenta colors.

I've got a few ideas for how to create a fire effect:

• Flicker group effect, applied to each dimmer independently, with slightly varying settings to create random flicker (the group effect causes all channels to flicker together when applied to a group)
• Sparkle group effect.  This can be applied on a whole group level to all dimmers.
• Treat the 12 dimmers as a pixel matrix and run starfield on them. 

The problem is that none of these allow me to control for the second condition listed above.  Any ideas (besides spending hours writing a long, looping timeline of random intensities on the warm colors & fitting the blues in during the gaps, which could work, but could also take double digit programming hours, and wouldn't allow for a lot of adjustment once we get access to the site without spending hours adjusting the timeline).

 Thanks,

Doug

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JeffMabray replied on 04-12-2008 9:48 PM

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Ya know, I am wondering if there couldn't be some sort of "color on color" effect only applied to intensities.  I don't know that it exists currently, but that might be something to ask the guys from carrallon to see if they could put it together...

 Although, after playing with different fire effects, I would just play with it some at the site.  It may not even be an issue once the designer takes a look at it and sees how it looks.

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jfuchs replied on 04-15-2008 8:16 AM

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What about...

Using generic RGBA LED fixtures in the Pharos Programmer, and then setting your Incandescent dimmers to the appropriate spacing, i.e. Red (1), Blue (3), Amber (4), Red (5), Blue (7), Amber (8)... etc...

Then you could use the flicker effect with a Blue background color, a Red middle color and an Amber Top color.  By adjusting the distance up from the bottom with the blue, and it's proximity to the Red, you would minimize the Purple or magenta color mix between times.  It seems like it works in my simulation window, and the Output window still sends dmx levels for the phantom "green" channels, but I'd be willing to bet that it'd look pretty close. 

The only thing I've not figured out how to do, and I'm sure it's simple, is to get it to "roll" across the four groups.  might just have to tweak the oscillation sliders, with a similar flicker preset in each. (like you said)

Might work?