Creating a Scene

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In the Light-O-Rama SuperStar Sequencer, a "scene" is a set of pixels that have the same start color, the same end color, a start time, and an end time.

 

Initialize the Screen

Launch the Scene Dialog Box

Select Some Pixels in the Pixel Grid

Add the Scene

Play the Scene

Create a Scene that Has an End Color

Play the Scenes

Change Some Settings

Modify a Scene

Play the Scenes Again

Why Did the First Scene Go from Red to Purple to Blue?

Undo and Redo Your Modification

Group Select

Group Modify

Using Group Modify to Clone

Pause and Freeze Frame

Add Some More Scenes of Your Choosing

Save the Scenes You Have Created

 

Initialize the Screen

 

Click on the toolbar button with a piece of paper on it.  This will do three things: It will clear the pixel grid, set the Start color as red, and set the time duration to 1.00-2.00 seconds.

 

Launch the Scene Dialog Box

 

Click on the Tools menu and select "Scenes".  The Scene dialog box will launch.  Whenever the scene dialog box is launched, the "Monochrome" mode is automatically selected and the toolbar button with a black and red rectangle will depress.

 

Select Some Pixels in the Pixel grid

 

While in "Monochrome" mode, you can color pixels in the pixel grid using the left mouse button.  You can use single click or click and drag.  You can erase pixels in the pixel grid using the right mouse button.  Ctrl + right mouse button will erase the entire grid.  Since the Start color is already set to red, the pixels will become red as you select them.

 

Add the Scene

 

In the Scene dialog box, click on the "Add" button to add the scene.

 

Play the Scene

 

Click on the play button in the toolbar (the button with a triangle pointing to the right).  Note that at 1.00 seconds, the group of pixels you selected will turn red.

 

Create a Scene that Has an End Color

 

The default is for the "Start"and "End" color to both be red.  Let's change that and create another scene:

 

Set the start and end time to 2.00 to 3.00 seconds.  You can select the time with the mouse by selecting a region in the time scale, or you can type into the fields in the dialog box.

Color some pixels.

The left red control is already at 100%; the selected pixels will turn red.

Set the right red control to 0%; this represents the "End" color.  When you set the "End" color it does not appear in the pixel grid, but it does appear as a number in the Scene dialog.

Click on the "Add" button to add this scene.

 

Play the Scenes

 

Click on the Play button in the toolbar.  At 1.00 seconds the first group of pixels will turn red and stay red.  At 2.00 seconds, the second group of pixels will turn red and fade to black.

 

Change Some Settings

 

In the Scene dialog box, there is a list box listing the scenes you have added.  They are listed chronologically by their start times.  Select the first scene in the list.  Note that the time, colors, and pixels for that scene appear in the main screen.  The "End" color for this scene is black.  Set 100% Blue for the end color.  You can do this with the right Blue color control, or by manually typing 100 into the field in the Scene dialog box.

 

Note: Right click on the colored box above the color controls to bring up a "Color Picker" dialog.

 

Modify a Scene

 

Click on the "Modify" button.  This will apply the new settings to the currently selected scene.

 

Play the Scenes Again

 

Click on the Play button.  at 1.00 seconds, the pixels in the first scene will turn red, fade to purple, and then fade to blue by 2.00 seconds.  At 2.00 - 3.00 seconds, the second scene will play, same as it did before.

 

Why Did the First Scene Go from Red to Purple to Blue?

 

You probably already figured this out: What you really did was set a red ramp that started at 100 and ended at 0.  You also set a blue ramp that started at 0 and ended at 100.  So in the middle, red was at 50 and blue was at 50, and the red and blue mix to make purple.

 

Undo and Redo Your Modification

 

Click on the Edit menu and select "Undo Scene Modify".  Then click on the Edit menu and select "Redo Scene Modify".

 

If you do an Add, Modify, or Delete, and change your mind, you can undo your change.  You can undo up to ten actions.  After undoing up to ten actions, you can also redo them.

 

Group Select

 

There are two ways to use the mouse to select both of the scenes:

 

1.Click and hold the left mouse button and drag the selection rectangle to contain both of the scenes in the time layer area.

2.Click on the first scene to select it, then press and hold the Ctrl key while clicking on the second scene.

 

Group Modify

 

Set the start color to yellow, by setting 100% red and 100% green (red and green mix to make yellow).  Click on "Group Modify" in the Scene dialog box.  A popup box will appear, entitled "Scene Group Modify".

 

Because you changed the start color, "Modify Start Color" will already be selected.  Click on "OK".  Note that the start color of both the scenes has changed to yellow.

 

Using Group Modify to Clone

 

Click on "Group Modify" again; because you have not changed anything, none of the boxes are selected.  However, you can select any or all of the checkboxes to clone the attributes of the first scene onto all the selected scenes.  For example, select "Modify End Color", then click "OK".  The End color will be cloned onto the second scene.

 

Group Modify is a very powerful tool that can save a lot of time as you fine tune a sequence.  It allows you to change an attribute across an entire group of effects just to see how it looks.  As with other features, you can undo and redo a group modify.

 

Pause and Freeze Frame

 

To the left of the stop button on the toolbars is the pause button.  When you press the pause button, a white line appears at the time selection point.  While paused, the rewind and forward keys will step through the sequence in "freeze frame" manner.  You can also click anywhere on the timeline to reposition the location of the freeze frame.  This is very useful while developing sequences, to better see what each frame of the sequence will look like.

 

Unpause by clicking on the pause button again, or by clicking on the stop button.

 

Add Some More Scenes of Your Choosing

 

Go ahead and add some more scenes and play with the different settings.  The times of the scenes can overlap.  however, scenes that share the same time period should not share the same pixels.  This creates a "pixel collision", and currently the results are not predictable (in the future, the SuperStar Sequencer will detect and prevent collisions).

 

Save the Scenes You Have Created

 

Click on the File menu and select "Save As".  Save the scenes you have created as a file named "MyScenes.sup".