gridMAster Help

Contents

Introduction

GridMAster is a suite of tools providing additional methods of selection grid manipulation that are not currently possible with the native console software. The tools all operate on the current selection of fixtures.

For help downloading and installing the plugin click here.

Once licencing is complete, you will be presented with a screen offering to install some shortcut macros. These are not required for operation, but do provide shortcuts to the different functions of the plugin:

The tabs on the left hand side of the window give access to the available functions of the plugin. More details of each function are available on this page.

Shape Selection

This gives the user the ability to create a 'radial' or 'polar' selection of fixtures in the selection grid, providing the ability to create various shaped effects based on the selection grid and MAtricks settings. The plugin uses fixture position data either from the 3d fixture location in the patch, or from an existing selection grid. The grid is then transformed into angular, or rotational position in the x direction on the grid, and the radial position (distance from centre) in the y direction. The Z axis is not used, however if the selected fixtures already have z axis information in the selection grid, this information is retained.

To give an example, consider a 30x30 grid of fixtures, arranged here in the X and Z plane (viewed from the front in the 3D window):

A typical selection, made from the 3d window, could look something like the selection grid shown on the left. If we apply the radial selection, we could end up with a selection grid looking similar to the grid on the right.

This may look a bit strange, but if we were now to apply a red/white phaser with an X phase of 0 thru 360 degrees, we would end up with the look on the left - a rotating effect around the centre of the grid, viewed in the 3d window. The same phaser, with the same radial selection settings, but with a Y axis phase of 0-360 gives the effect on the right, with the effect coming out from the centre of the grid:

There are a number of settings available for Shape Selections, described below:


Shape Type

Three shape types are currently available - Circle, polygon and star. Some of these have additional options, discussed below.

Origin Source

This defines the 'origin' of the calculation i.e. the centre of the effect. This can be defined as an XYZ 3D position by selection the 3D Coordinate option. Alternatively you can nominate a specific fixture to use as the centre point. There are also a number of options, such as Centre, Bottom etc. These will cause the tool to use a mathematically calculated origin based on the selection. Effects created based on the resulting selection grid will appear to start from, or rotate around this origin.

Starting Angle

Entering a value here other than zero will 'rotate' the finished selection by the specified number of degrees. This allows you to define the starting point for a selection used for, eg, and offset timing or effect.

Offset X,Y,Z

These are used to set the 3d position of the origin when 3d coordinate is selected. In other cases they function as an offset from the chosen origin. For example, you could select Centre but the add something to the Y offset, so that the centre of the effect is actually just above the true centre. This can be used to fine tune the resultant selection to obtain the required effect.

Fixture as Origin

When fixture is chosen as the origin source, then the fixture can be specified here. The 3D position of the fixture is used, and an offset can be applied as described above.

Position Source

The tool currently only works in a 2 dimensional plane, and this can be selected here. XZ is equivalent to looking at the stage from the front, XY from the top and YZ from the side. The final option Grid allows you to use an existing selection grid as the source of the fixture positions, rather than their true 3d position. The current grid layout of the selection will be used in this case.

Advanced Options

When this toggle is enabled, some additional options are displayed.

Remove Offset

Sometimes, depending on the layout of the fixtures, an offset can appear at the start of the resulting group. When enabled, these options remove this offset by forcing the resulting selection grid to always start at position 0 – much like the ‘Auto remove offset’ option in the selection grid window. ‘Angle’. Will remove any X offset, and ‘Distance’ any Y offset.

Angular Resolution

This is the angle from the origin represented by one cell in the X direction of the selection grid. The default is 1 degree. The tick box to the right allows the angular feature to be turned off, and the existing X grid position will be retained.

Distance Resolution

is the distance from the origin represented by one cell in the Y direction of the selection grid. The default is 0.1 (i.e. 100cm). As with the Angular option, this direction can be disabled if not desired.

Multi instance Fixtures

The tool will work with multi instance fixtures, however it is currently unable to extract the 3d information directly, so a selection grid must be used as the position source.

Flatten Z Axis

When enabled, any Z axis information from the starting selection will be discarded, with all fixtures being placed at 0 on the Z axis. If not selected, any Z axis information will be retained, with only the X and Y being adjusted to reflect the radial Selection values.

Shape Options

Circle

This is the default option, and provides a circular selection, coming out from centre (or a defined origin, if desired)

Polygon

This allows flat sided shapes to be created, for example Squares, triangles, Hexagons etc, based on 2 additional settings. (Here a 3 sides shape – aka a triangle – is shown.

Number of Sides - Defines how many sides your shape contains. Theoretically this can be any number greater than 3, although with higher numbers, the result will very much depend on how many fixtures are available in your selection.

Ratio - This setting defines if the shape should be symmetrical or appear ‘squashed’ or ‘stretched’. For instance, with a 4 sides square, setting this to something other than 1 will result in a rectangle. A ratio of 0.5 will lead to a horizontal rectangle, where the shorter sides are twice as long as the longer sides. A ratio of 2 will have the same effect, but will result in a vertical rectangle. The shape can also be rotated using the Starting Angle setting in the advanced options.

Star

This option will allow for a star shaped polygon to be created, where the number of points can be defined. Here a 5 pointed star is shown.

Number of Points - The number of points can be defined here, basically any number above 3, however see the note below.

Loops - As the star shape is created mathematically, there is more than one type of star that can be created for any given number of points. Also known as the ‘winding value’ this number defines how the points are linked. Generally, each point is linked by a straight line, and this number defines how many intermediate points are skipped when drawing this line. It is worth experimenting with different values. Generally a large value here will result in a ‘spikier’ star.

Note With both polygon and star, the shapes above have been created by applying a phase range to the Y axis, as this is the ‘distance from centre’ axis. Applying phase offsets to the X axis will always result in a ‘round the clock’ pattern, as per a circle effect. It is of course possible to transpose these after creating using the ‘transpose’ function within GridMAster.

Hint Not all combinations of points and loops will create a successful star shaped outcome, and no error checking is provided for this. Even if a star is not possible, some kind of shape will result, and some interesting geometric patterns can be found by using seemingly incompatible numbers. It is also worth experimenting with different phases, groups and wings on both the X and Y grid axis as the outcomes can be surprisingly effective.

Layout to Grid

This tool allows you to use the arrangement of fixtures in a layout view and convert this to a selection grid. This is useful where the correct 3D positions of the fixtures have not been set, or where an alternative configuration of the fixtures is required.

To use this tool, select the required fixtures and then run the plugin, or the appropriate shortcut macro. Choose the layout you wish to use as the position source from the dropdown list and hit 'Apply'.

The plugin will attempt to calculate the most accurate selection grid possible from the layout. However this can result in quite large grids, with the fixtures spaced far apart. To compensate for this, if required, the scale option can be used to bring it back to a reasonable size. The default scale is 1.

Multi-Instance Tools

This tab contains a suite of useful tools to assist with the manipulation of multi-instance fixtures.

Remove X Gaps

Remove X Gaps toggle applies to all the other functions. When selected, any empty columns will be removed from the resulting selection, resulting in a more compact grid.

Sort Current Selection

This feature allows you to organise subfixtures in a logical order - with fixtures in order on the X axis, and subfixtures in order on the Y axis. With this example, the selection on the left would become the selection on the right:

Select Subfixtures Down

This function 'explodes' a multi instance fixture into the next level down of its children, arranged on the Y axis in subfixture number order. This is similar behaviour to using the down arrow in v1.x of the grandMA3 software.

Select Subfixtures Linear

This feature will replace any parent fixtures with their respective children, arranged in the same order as the original selection, laid out on the X axis. This results in a ‘wider’ selection, but with the overall fixtures still in the desired order. In this example, we have 7 Magic Blade fixtures, each with 7 cells. The master fixtures are selected in a certain order on the grid, with gaps. The resultant selection of cells respects this order, and the gaps between master fixtures.

Select Subfixtures on Parent Grid Position

This function also explodes multi instance fixtures, however the resultant child fixtures will be 'stacked' onto the same grid square as their original parents. This means that child fixtures will behave exactly the same as their parents in terms of grouping when complex fixtures are used.

This could also be useful in circumstances where 'simple' fixtures are exchanged for multi instance ones, and the programming needs to be applied across multiple subfixtures.

Select Parent

Allows you to select the parent of any currently selected subfixture, whilst retaining the grid layout. The parent fixtures do not need to have been initially selected, unlike the action of using the UP key. Where multiple children of the same parent are selected, the lowest grid position from the child will be used to position the parent within the grid.

If the fixture has more than 1 level of subfixture - i.e. children, grandchildren and so on, the plugin will select the immediate parent - i.e. move up one level.

Select Top Parent

This works as per the previous option, however will always select the main parent of the fixture, regardless of the level of subfixtures the original selection contained.

Sub Selection

On this tab you will find a way of creating a subselection from the existing selection.

To use the tool, first select the grid axis you would like to work in. The default is the X axis.

Next enter the number of fixtures you would like to be in your final selection, and finally select if you would like these to be taken counting from the left, the right, or the centre of your current selection. (Selecting centre means that your resulting selection will be taken from the centre of your current selection, rather than counting from centre - see below).

In the above illustration, the centre 4 fixtures from the original 12 have been selected.

Entering a fractional number below 1 in the quantity field will cause the tool to select a proportion of the original selection. For example, 0.5, left, will give you the left hand half of the current selection. Entering 0.3333 and selecting centre in the above example would give the same result as the illustration.

Remove Gaps

These three buttons work much in the same way that toggling the 'Preserve grid positions' button in the grid window does. They will remove any completely empty columns rows or layers (X, Y or Z) but ignore any that are inhabited by 1 or more fixtures in any of the other planes. This allows you to only remove gaps in, say, the Y and Z axes, whilst retaining desired spacing on the X axis.

Stretch

This tool allows you to 'stretch' individual lines of a selection grid in any direction, where each line has a different number of fixtures, resulting in each line having the same overall width.

A good use case would be 3 parallel trusses each with a different quantity of fixtures, however it is desired to have a single group that represents all three trusses for the purposes of building effects.

Here is an example initial selection, representing 3 trusses. The first has 30 lights, the second 10 and the third 20. After applying the stretch tool, the selection grid looks like the image on the right:

An effect applied to this new selection (for example from left to right) should look more coherent across all three trusses.

This utility can also be used to scale the current selection to any desired size, whilst retaining the current spacings insofar as is possible.

Some options are available:

X, Y, Z

The stretch utility can work in one or more planes simultaneously, and these can be selected with these buttons. The default is to just work in the X direction.

Defined Grid Width

When enabled, the three fields below can be used to set the exact dimensions of the scaled grid. This is initially set to the size of the current selection grid, but can be changed as desired. In this way, a selection can also be scaled up or down as required. Entering 1 will 'flatten' that axis entirely.

Preserve Start and End Offsets

When this option is enabled, any gaps at the start or end of a row in the selection grid will be preserved (and scaled if necessary). In our 3 truss example, this would help align the first and last fixtures on each truss if they are of different widths.

Preserve Spacing

Usually, all the fixtures on any given row of the grid will be equally spaced. However if the source grid already has gaps between fixtures and this option is selected then these gaps will be retained, and scaled if necessary, in order to keep the same relative spacing between fixtures.

Transpose

This tool allows the axes of the current selection grid to be swapped in any direction, allowing easy manipulation in any plane. Simply click on the required transformation and the grid will be adjusted as required.

Revolve

This tool allows you to 'rotate' a selection of fixtures. Imagine a real life set of 10 fixtures arranged in a circle, and a linear selection of these 10 fixtures. If you would like the first fixture in your selection to be the 'top' fixture in the circle, and this is not, say, fixture 1, then this tool will help. You can rotate the selection by either a specific number of fixtures, or a proportion, expressed in degrees as per the phase of a phaser.

In the below example, fixture 4 could be our 'top' fixture - the resulting selection makes this the first fixture in the selection, whilst retaining the overall selection order:
Results in the following 'Before' and 'After' selections:

Invert

This utility allows you to turn a selection 'inside out' on any axis. Consider the above example of a circle, but you decide you want a selection starting from the bottom, rather than the top of the circle:

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