In this video we're going to look at creating effects on the s play. The inbuilt effects and
gradient engine mean you can take an s plate to your project and program a 32 universe light show.
This can contain animated gradient effects pulses static looks for wash lights and chases for pixel
tape or without the need to record from a lighting desk or install any software on your computer.
Just connect to its web interface and you're away. If you wanted to use the s play with
moving lights for other complex fixtures we'll add a link in the video description
to static and dynamic queue creation. Before creating an effect it's worth
navigating to the s play settings page and ensuring your output settings are correct.
For this video I'm using three eight segment RGB LED bars this is plugged into one of the
DMX outputs on the back of the s play. In the output settings we can see the first two internal
universes of the s play are set to send from the DMX ports if you wanted to change all to a
protocol at once you could do it in the drop down to the right hand side. Once complete we can press
update and then head back to the queue library and press the plus icon to add a new effect.
I'm going to call my new effect gradient and to make it easier to see what's going on with
my fixtures I'll press preview. By default the s play creates an effect that spans a full universe
with the invert after x fixtures feature set to zero. As I've only got 24 RGB elements I'll reduce
this to 24. Right away we can see the gradient snap to cover a tighter range of fixtures.
if we had a grid of pixel tape wired in an s configuration we could use the invert after
every x fixtures option to make sure all gradient effects are lined up and kept in
line top to bottom. Now this worked for me right away because I'm using RBG fixtures starting on
channel one but you may be using RGBW or grp just dimmers or another combination. For that reason
we've made sure to include a huge range of predefined colour orders including 16-bit
support for our ENTTEC smart pixel LED dots. DMX start address and the fixture offset between
each new DMX address can be modified quickly. You can even use the offset option to create
some cool looking effects that you can layer with other cues that you've already created.
Moving on we can use the speed and direction slider to animate the gradient effect.
I'll set this to 28 and then I'll select the blue toggle to change it to a more saturated colour.
It's worth noting that you can set intensity waves by defining one of these as having no colour too.
I'll slow this down and change the direction.
By clicking on the gradient we can have more colour stops.
To make a smooth loop we can set the colours at each end of the gradient to be the same.
Down the bottom of the interface we can see the s play's active internal universes
that the effect occupies when running.
We can toggle on as many universes as needed for our install.
Anything that isn't toggled on won't get saved with the effect.
If you want to spread the effect so it takes longer to run over your range of fixtures
simply increase the number of virtual fixtures the gradient occupies. Here I'll set 340. instantly
you can see how the effect has been spread out in the real world. Given that the full effects size
now spans two universes the green boxes in the UI have expanded to indicate that to view the full
cycle at once two universes are needed. As ever you can still modify any settings as you require.
If I scroll down you can see the full 340 fixtures and the active colours the
s play has generated for this effect. When happy with this effect we can press save.
It can be previewed directly from the queue library or duplicated so
you don't have to start from the beginning when it comes to creating another effect.
If we head over to the playlist tab we can see the gradient and its duplicates have populated already
for us to drag into the timeline alongside any other triggers events or cues you may have made.
I'll drag this on create a fade in and fade out time and add the other effect too.
After this I'll give it a name.
Set it to start on powerup and press save.
Now I'm pressing play the playlist will start the effect will fade in and then loop infinitely.
See our other videos and learn more about how to
set up playlists triggers and schedules for the s play over at ENTTEC.com and as ever if
you've got any questions leave them in the comments below or drop our team a message