Best practise - scenes and fixtures

[RickyReject]

Hello,

I'm more of a musician than a lighting engineer, so bare with me...

What's the best practise for setting up scenes? I've been doing 1 scene for 1 set of fixtures - i.e. "Front PAR scene" and then "Side PAR scene".

Is it perhaps better to treat one scene for all fixtures and turn on/off fixtures as needed within that scene - i.e. have one scene called "All lights full blast" or "Front PAR full blast, side PAR flashing" rather than having them separated on different scenes?

Pros and cons? With the way I'm doing it now (1 scene for 1 set of fixtures) I find it troublesome because sometimes one scene will cut of the beams of some fixtures if the fixture isn't set to "on" in both scenes.

[willm]

Hi Ricky,

Thanks for your post! I will do my best to advise here, but I am afraid this is not quite a one solution fits all situation and there are many factors that can dictate what works and what doesn't for your setup. For example, projects with many fixtures will be handled significantly differently to projects with only a hand full of fixtures.

My main piece of advice is to utilise Banks. A Bank is essentially a group of scenes, so these are very useful on both an organisational level as well as a functional one. All scenes have a 'release mode' and a 'protect from release' function, which often relates to banks. For example, by default, all scenes are set to 'Bank' release mode- meaning that triggering any other scene within the same bank will turn off the other scenes in the same bank. This can be changed however, allowing you to have more than 1 scene in the same bank active, or have a scene in one bank turn off another scene in a different bank, etc.

You could use banks in many ways, here are a few examples:

1) You could separate banks by FUNCTION and FIXTURE. E.g. one bank for Movement effects on the Moving Heads, another bank for Colours on the Moving Heads, another for Dimmer effects on the Moving Heads, then another one for Dimmer effects on the PARs, then another for Colours on the PARs... etc.

This gives a lot of flexibility as you can combine many layers of scenes to achieve different looks, but takes a lot more programming and can get more confusing. Using this method, you can also have a bank for Super Scenes, which will allow you to layer multiple scenes together, which can be triggered simultaneously (so you can have 1 Super Scene trigger any amount of scenes from other banks simultaneously, or staggered over the timeline).

2) You could simply separate banks by FIXTURE. E.g. One bank for all scenes on the Moving Heads (for example- each scene has a Move effect and a Colour and/or Dimmer effect, so triggering one scene controls multiple controls), then another bank for all the scenes on the PARs, etc.

This gives less flexibility, but will greatly reduce the number of scenes used and increase the simplicity of the project.

The possibilities are nearly endless really! Perhaps it would be helpful to provide some more information about your project, such as the patch list, so that other users will be able to see that and provide some more specific information about your setup.

Kind regards,
Will

[RickyReject]

Many thanks for the reply and helpful insights. That's really valuable!

I think my main issue stems from lack of knowledge on how Daslight works - maybe some other community member can chime in and verify

I always thought that a scene with an FX rack on it only affected the fixtures/beams in that FX. But apparently a scene affects all fixtures in the project. So you could basically say that a scene is by default a static scene but if you add FX to it, it will be an "fx scene" for the fixtures/beams in the FX while still remaining a static scene for features not in an FX-rack.

I think that is correct? Knowing this I know have a better idea on how to start setting up my scenes.

For the interested, the setup is a small modest setup of fixtures for live streaming my performances:

Group: "Side PAR"
2 Side PAR-lights, DMX address 1-4 and 25-28.

Group: "Main PAR":
4 Front PAR-lights, DMX address 5-8, 9-12, 17-20, 21-24.

Group: "Derby":
1 Derby, DMX address 13-16.

[willm]

A scene can control any number of fixtures within the project, you can even have a scene with multiple FX engines each controlling different fixtures... It can get quite complex quite quickly!

For your setup, and being relatively new to the software- I would perhaps suggest something up something fairly simple like this:

Bank 1 = Side par colours.
- Set up some simple static colours here.
- Be sure to set all scenes on this bank to Release mode 'Specific banks', then highlight bank 1 and 3. This means when you trigger a scene in this bank it will stop any of the scenes from bank 1 and 3.

Bank 2 = Main par colours
- Set up some simple static colours here.
- Be sure to set all scenes on this bank to Release mode 'Specific banks', then highlight bank 2 and 3. This means when you trigger a scene in this bank it will stop any of the scenes from bank 2 and 3.

Bank 3 = ALL par colour
- Set up some static or FX scenes here that affect all pars (rainbows, chasers, static gradients etc.).
- Be sure to set all scenes on this bank to Release mode 'Specific banks', then highlight bank 1, 2 and 3. This means when you trigger a scene in this bank it will stop any of the scenes from bank 1, 2 or 3.

Bank 4 = Par dimmer effects
- Set up some Dimmer effects for your pars here (chaser FX, curve FX, etc).
- Be sure to set the Scene priority of these scenes to High so that they overwrite the dimmer settings from banks 1, 2 and 3.
- These can run simultaneously with any scene from Bank 1, 2 or 3- so you can combine multiple effects with the dimmer effects to create variation.

Bank 5 = Derby colours
- Set up some static and dynamic colour scenes here.

Bank 6 = Derby rotation
- Set up some rotation scenes here to get the Derby moving.

I've attached a quick example show demonstrating this just to help visualise what I have written. Hope this helps!

Kind regards,
Will

[RickyReject]

Hello there Will,

This is quite brilliant! Both with regards to the actual functionality as well as the support given. I can’t thank you enough.

Your attached example really helped and with your instructions I also managed to do my own small working project. I’ve used Daslight for a while but this feels like I’ve made a breakthrough in how it *really* works (or how it actually could work). I.e. I’m starting to get the concept

Now I have something to work from and I understand how you could use it in quite a few different ways. For me and my setup, this feels like ”best practice” though

Again, many thanks. Best support and help I’ve received from any company in a long while.

[willm]

Glad to be of assistance, Ricky!

Happy to help again in future if you have any further questions or issues.

Kind regards,
Will

[Petr_C64]

I have a separate set of banks for each device as needed.

For LEDBAR for example : colors, effects(fadein/out, pulse)
For MovingHead : colors, positions, movements, effects
For Wash heads : colors, positions, effects
For Lasers : paterns, colors, speed
etc...

Then I just turn on what I need one by one and don't affect the positions when I change the color and vice versa