Magic ColorGrid Plugin

BECOME PART OF THE COMMUNITY - Sign up here
  • Yet another colorgrid plugin :)


    Due to the boredom of the lockdown i was able to write a little plugin as many have done before me in order to get earlier to the catering on the job.


    Maybe you will find it useful on the job or at least as reference for your own development.


    Thanks to the inofficial api documentation from hoss I was able to give it an installation gui to make it more user friendly.


    I would be happy to receive some feedback if you like it or if you don´t what I may improve.


    Get it on github:

    https://github.com/Toom3000/ma3_Magic_ColorGrid


    Magic_ColorGrid

    This plugin creates a ColorGrid for the grandMA3

    Features

    • Discovery of all current groups prior to installation
      • Groups to be included to the grid are fully user defineable
    • Direct and manual mode for color picking
      • In manual mode the colors can be picked and will be applied by a trigger button
      • In direct mode the colors will be immediately applied if picked
    • Delay Align buttons for each group
    • Delaytime adjustment
    • Fadetime adjustment

    Compatibility

    Tested on grandMA3 Version 1.4.0.2


    Installation

    • Copy the files in lib_images/ to
      • <YOUR_INSTALLATION_DRIVE>:\ProgramData\MALightingTechnology\gma3_1.4.0\shared\resource\lib_images
    • Copy the Magic_ColorGrid folder in lib_plugins/ to
      • <YOUR_INSTALLATION_DRIVE>:\ProgramData\MALightingTechnology\gma3_1.4.0\shared\resource\lib_plugins
    • Now import the plugin
      • Start your grandMA3 software
      • Navigate to your plugin pool or create a new one on an empty View
      • Create a new plugin
      • Import the Magic_ColorGrid plugin
    • Execute the plugin and enjoy the ride :)


    Best Regards,


    Thomas

    Edited once, last by Toom (December 30, 2020 at 7:24 PM).

  • Hey Folks,

    during testing i encountered a few annoying bugs during installation on a clean showfile. The main one caused Color Presets to be created as global and not as intended as selective ones. This affects the fade and delay functionality so that it was not working at all :( This is fixed now in the github version. You would need to upgrade the script if you already tried using it.

    https://github.com/Toom3000/ma3_Magic_ColorGrid

    Best Regards,

    Thomas

  • Hey Folks,

    i made an upgraded version v1.0.2 that now also supports ColorWheel fixtures in the grid as well as auto discovery of the color capabilities of all groups.

    • Fixtures not capable of full color mixing like rgb or cmy are now supported as long as they are using a color wheel.
      • The colornames will be guessed from the values stored in the wheel configuration and i am trying to map them if a match is found.
      • Delay and Fadetimes are not applied to the Colorwheel commands since in my opinion that makes no sense.
    • During initialization all fixtures are probed for their color mixing capabilities.
      • If a group does not offer color attributes it will not be included in the list. This is useful for groups like fog, fan or generic dimmer channels.
    • A bug has been fixed which caused the delay to flip white if the same color group was triggered again.

    https://github.com/Toom3000/ma3_Magic_ColorGrid

  • Hi Toom,

    I have tried installing your Colorgrid on the latest build of ma3 1.5.2. (At the time of this post.)

    It freezes during the installation of the plugin. The screenshot of my command line does show some indication of where problems are:

    Is this something I did wrong or any idea on how to fix this?

  • This is amazing and just tried it on the newest version 1.6 and it unfortunately did not work, but I knew it wouldn't being it was not made for this version. will you be able to update it for 1.6? I would really be interested in using it.

  • Hi, appreciate the responses. A little update: I did make a slight modification to the script to address the issue that Ryan Kanarek just identified. I believe after using it on another show file that any fixtures with subfixtures defined in a group causes the script to bomb because of how the command line interprets new syntax changes made in the newer versions of ma. Will post updates if I learn anything else.


    Brian M.


    P.S. I have some very old experience coding in c and c++ but needless to say my knowledge is amateur and I am having to learn this script from scratch so it is slow and tedious.

    Edited once, last by bmak8239 (October 14, 2021 at 4:01 AM).

  • I have updated the image installation folder in the installation description since for some reason that does not work out of the system directories anymore. Additionally i added a very simple Nullsoft based installer that quickly copies all files to their location.

    Release ma3_1.6.3 Fix Release · Toom3000/ma3_Magic_ColorGrid
    Fix for ma3_1.6.3 lua api change -> Added installer for more conveniant setup.
    github.com

    I would appreciate some feedback if the installation is now working properly or if there are still some issues.

    Regards,

    Thomas

  • Due to a new "issue" in 1.7.2.2 which tends to crash the application if macro commands are too long i had to figure that out and update my MagicColorGrid script.

    The new version should run on 1.7.2. At least if have not encountered any further issues so far.

    Release ma3_1.7.22 Fix Release · Toom3000/ma3_Magic_ColorGrid
    Fix for ma3 version 1.7.2.2 Issue fix was complete application crash on maco command creation.
    github.com

    Regards,

    Thomas

  • Hi dherderich,

    in my main Magic_ColorGrid script it actually crashes and restarts automatically or pretty rarely does hang forever. I tracked it down to this bunch of commands which are adding a lot of commands to a single macro execution line. I chose this way since the macro execution was noticeable slower in prior versions if the commands are separated and not chained and combined into one larger command in one line.

    However if i execute this plugin on my onPC 1.7.2.2 installation it hangs everytime and takes one core of my cpu at full load and all output stops. If the sCrash flag is set to false the script will not crash.

    Maybe this is somehow not intended to work and i am misunderstanding how to use that properly, however this has been working up to version 1.6.3.

    Best Regards,

    Thomas

  • The sCrash flag is a global flag in the small script that I wrote to reproduce the hang issue. If you set it to "false" then the script will run through like a charm without any hangs. I assume this is due to the shorter command string.

  • For some reason I cant find a folder called <YOUR_INSTALLATION_DRIVE>:\ProgramData\MALightingTechnology\gma3_1.6.3\shared\resource\lib_plugins

    It just isn't there. Only things I can find in "C:\ProgramData\MALightingTechnology" are "gma3_1.7.2","gma3_library","gma3_software_update" and "installation packages"

  • Go to the gma3_library folder and from there you can reach datapools/plugins and media/images where you have to put the plugin itself and the images.

    Within the gma3_library folder structure the files can be used by any future version. With the old instructiions using the gma3_vx.y.z-folders you would have to copy the files for each new version.

Participate now!

Don’t have an account yet? Register yourself now and be a part of our community!