Daslight Forum

Hi

I help run a youth theatre company and occasionally have to explain to theatre technicians what we want the lighting to do. Normally we have fairly limited contact with the techs and I have generated powerpoint files showing very basic ovals of light and general wash colours - hideously primitive and not massively useful. I've been looking for software that I can use to give an indication of what we want (either as a bespoke file type or as a series of screen shots) and the techs suggested Daslight. So I've downloaded it. The Virtual 3D Simulator sounds ideal, but...

The problems are I'm not a lighting technician and I don't have a lighting desk attached to my pc. All I want to do is generate a "stage" area with some simple basic lights (a few white wash, spots, colour wash, etc.) but I haven't a clue how to start. I'm a bit wary of digging into the user guides because they will presuppose a) I have a desk and b) I know what the hell I'm doing.

Can anyone assist in advising me what I need to do first to get some fake lights added to the controls and then how to start generating some kind of visualisation of a stage?

And why isn't there a simple program for theatre group directors to play with so that they can give the lighting guys an easy to understand simple mock-up of what they want the lights to look like?

Cheers

Nick

PS - I've been having a bit more of a dig through the software and have started to pick up the basics now. I've got a stage loaded and a random bunch of generic lights, as well as a man sat on a box and a couple of women in really odd poses. Feeling a bit more confident about what I'm doing now...

Hi Nick

You don't need a desk to use Daslight. Daslight IS the desk.

I guess you have figured this out now, but here are afew tips:

1:add your lighting fixtures on the SETUP tab. Choose your fixture type on the left and patch it to the grid on the right (if this is only for demonstration, it doesn't matter where on the grid you patch your lights). Use the generic folder to add single channel PARs

2:got to the editor tab, create a new scene (top left of the scene window), select your fixtures in the bottom right and move the faders. To create dynamic scenes, create new steps on the right and add fade and wait times

3:to visualize your show, open the virtual 3D simulator, your lights will be inserted automatically. Go to construction mode and drag your lights to rearrange. If you have a par can with a color gel, you can change the color of the beam by selecting the fixtures tab (in construction mode) and then choosing a color under the paint bucket collumn

For more information, check out the first 4 tutorials of the Getting Started collection and the first 4 tutorials of the 'Virtual 3D Simulator' collection. These can be found here:
http://www.daslight.com/en/tuto.htm