Hi programmers- Welcome to my Guide
to How grandMA2 Effects really work. If you’re struggling with some
aspect of the math of effects, I think this this video is gonna
clear some of that up for you. This was another topic requested by a viewer. If
you’ve got a something you want me to cover, leave it in the comments below or you can always message
me at Consoletrainer on Facebook or Instagram. There’s gonna be A LOT of info in this tutorial.
This video is really for those of us who are already using, editing and creating effects
- but want to dive deeper into how the math actually works so they we can get the
most out of this super powerful tool. The mathematical concepts can be a
little advanced, but don’t worry. Honestly, I suck at math.
so I’m gonna explain how all this math works with real life examples … because
that’s how I - someone who SUCKS at math - have taught myself to understand this stuff.
And keep in mind that ultimately - effect math is being applied to a DMX channel - it’s just running
values between 0 and 255… and that math does not care at all about the physics of your units.
For example - maybe you’ve made a nice gracefully fading dimmer effect and you
want to apply it to some led fixtures that don’t have the best of low end dimmer curve. If
the fixture can’t do a nice crossfade, there’s no amount of math that’s gonna make that happen.
The math also doesn’t compensate for things like the actual speed that your moving heads can move
at. You may have set a movement effect for 120 BPM to match the rate of the song - but more likely
than not, your lights are not going to be able to complete the full movement at that frequency.
So what I’m getting at here is- even if you have a really great handle on how the math works,
ultimately, you gotta see what your lights do in real life and how that math translates
(or doesn’t)… and then just adjust from there. And don’t necessarily trust your visualizer
either. That’s a whole other type of math with lots of settings options that
don’t exactly equate to real life. OK let’s start with a quick review of the
first couple of cells of a grandMA2 effect. A Quantity of NONE makes this a template
effect that can be applied to any fixture that contains an attribute used in the attribute
column. If you add a selection of lights here, the effect becomes selective - meaning it’s
specific to those units. And I very much recommend using Selective effects when storing into cues.
Interleave picks an interval of your selection to actually apply the effect to. For example, an
odd or even interleave over a selection line of 6 would only apply that effect to
every other light in the selection. Attribute designates the type of channel
that the effect is being applied to, whether it’s dimmer, pan, tilt, color, etc.
Mode has 2 options. Absolute or relative. Our effects run between two points and they can
be specific values (if the effect is absolute) or they can be Relative to a starting value
established outside the effect. I’ll use some examples of both in this video and explain how
they affect what the LOW and HIGH Value cells do. The Form column is the most
important part of an effect. It’s the waveform that we’re going
to apply to a channel and modify. The MA includes a bunch of predefined
waves and you can even make your own.. but first, Let’s go back to when we were kids
and review what we learned about waveforms Here’s a basic sine wave.
This horizontal line is what we called the resting position in school. These high and low points of the wave
were called the crest and trough, and amplitude was the distance between that
resting position and the crest or the trough. Wavelength was often measured over 2 complete
waveforms- using the distance between crests or troughs as our 2 points, but this can also be
measured as the distance of one complete waveform- which is going to suit our understanding the best.
Frequency equals the number of waves in a specific amount of time. Most of the time, this interval
was expressed in Hertz. Hertz is just cycles per second, so if this drawing represented one second
and we see 2 waveforms- then our frequency is 2 Hertz. In our world, cycles per second is not
used nearly as often as BPM or beats per minute… So lets consider our timing intervals to be a
minute rather than a second. That would make the frequency of this image 2 Beats per minute, which
is pretty slow- but if we increased the frequency, or BPM, then our wavelengths would
be shortened making them run faster. If we had an effect with a frequency of
60 BPM, then we’d have 60 waveforms over the interval of a minute and we’d
complete one waveform every second. Now, let’s take a look at how the MA is going
to apply this waveform. Every wave is applied directly to a DMX channel, so imagine that this
vertical line represents DMX values between 0 (at the bottom) and 255 (at the top).
As we travel along this waveform, we start right in the middle at 128 and roll up
to 255 at our crest, then down to zero at our trough and back up to 128 before we continue on
to the next wave form and do the same thing again. If this was a dimmer channel, then we’d output
a value of 0 intensity at the bottom of the wave and 100% (or full) at the top… and our
resting position value in the middle is 50%, so our intensity would be traveling from 50%
up to full, down to 0 and back to 50 again. This time, let’s assume that this is a pan
channel with 540 degrees of pan functionality. So, our low DMX value of Zero would be negative
270 degrees, our resting point would be 0 degrees and the top end of our DMX channel would be the
other end of pan at positive 270 degrees, so our light would pan from 0 all the way one direction,
then all the way the other direction, and so on. Now that we’ve got the basics down, let’s
take a look at how we can manipulate these waveforms in the Effect editor. We’re going
to use a lot of dimmer effects as examples, because I think it’s easiest to
follow the math between 0 and 100. Right after our form selection,
these 3 speed settings are going to affect the frequency of our waveform.
The Rate and speed columns can be thought of as the same thing as they are directly
linked. Changing one changes the other. Remember that our Speed - in Beats Per Minute
- is the number of times the waveform will run in a minute. In this intensity effect, 20
BPM would mean that our lights will cycle between Full and 0 twenty times in a minute.
Speeding this up increases our frequency, so we would see more transitions between
0 and full in the space of one minute. Depending on the speed, some channels can’t
create the full waveform at higher speeds because of physics. Maybe an LED cell could run an
intensity effect with a really fast BPM correctly, but a unit with physical shutters probably can’t.
And trying to run a fast BPM on pan and tilt on a moving head is going to to be almost impossible.
The pan and tilt channels won’t be able to make it to the full distance of the range, so
you end up with a smaller looking effect. Remember when we were looking at our waveform
and talking about how frequency can also be expressed in HZ? Well, If you prefer
to think in Hz instead of BPM, you can change the default speed unit in the SETUP menu,
under USER, SETTINGs and then find speed mode. And while we’re talking about MA specific
options- this “Speed Group” cell allows you to change the speed or rate value of your effect
using an executor. This can be fun when you have to busk a show and you want to gracefully ramp
up or down between speeds of running effects. Some people prefer to use the
Learn Button to tap in BPM speed- but knowing that not all channels can keep
up with fast BPMs, I kinda like moving the executor and watching what the lights are really
doing to find a speed that syncs up to the music. One of things I always like to say is
that, even if the math is perfect - if it doesn’t look or feel right on stage,
it’s wrong. Imperfect math is real life. For the DIRECTION cell, you can
either picture flipping the waveform or imagine that we’re changing the direction we
follow over it. The carat forward is our normal direction and we can see that the Dimmer values
are rolling over our selection from SR to SL, and if we invert the carat - they now
look to go SL to SR. There’s also the bounce options that make this effect look like
its running SR to SL, then SL to SR and so on. On our waveform diagram, you can think of the LOW
and HIGH cells as the Trough and the Crest. They constrain the waveform between 2 points. You
probably already know that these High and Low cells can reference two presets to move between,
but this video is all about math, so let’s see how that works with simple values.This Dimmer Sine
Wave effect is an absolute effect, which means the values at low and high will equal our dimmer
output, in this case going between 0 and Full. If I change these to 25 and 75 … the dimmer
outputs remain exactly between those 2 values. Keep in mind, we’re really just
setting 2 points on the waveform- the lesser value doesn’t have to be in the LOW
cell- you can absolutely invert these numbers. We’re not gonna see a difference if you invert
these on this effect- but this is going to come back into play later in this video, in places
where the difference will definitely be seen. If you set a value outside of what the channel
can do, for example setting the HIGH to 200%, then your waveform would be trying
to double to output of your light- which the light obviously can’t do. So, the result
is that it will hold at the highest value it can do for the entire period that the waveform is
outside the physical limits of the light. At this point, your waveform output isn’t exactly linear
anymore, and it means that you’ll get an effect that seems to hold the full value longer than
the 0 value. … but if you want to trick the light into holding at a high or low value for a longer
period of time - sometimes this can be useful. That was an absolute effect. These
cells are gonna work a little bit different with a relative effect.
Most people are familiar with using relative position effects, which allow you
to throw on an effect and then change the starting point of the movement. I call
this the base value of the channel. Let’s try our dimmer sine wave as a relative
effect that runs our intensity between 0 and 50%. So now, the console is going to apply the “Low
and High Values” relatively to the base value. The number in these cells is important. A
value of zero in the low cell of a relative effect means that we’ll use the base value
already on our channel as the low point. So, if my lights start off at 0 and I hit this
effect, they run between 0 and 50%. If I change the base value to 50%, then my resulting effect
runs the intensity between 50 and full. If you change the number in the low cell - it will offset
the base value of your channel by a percentage of that channel. So, if our base value was 50% and
I change this to -10, it will subtract 10% from our base value and our effect will run between 40
percent and full. If I change it to 25, our effect would run between 75 and full. Same idea with
the High Value. Say I set this to 40. So now, I’m limiting my high value to 40% above my base
value and the effect now runs between 75 and 90%. There is another way to look at this. Let’s reset our settings to a low value of 0 and a
high of 100 and set our fixtures’ base value to 0. If we click the option in the bottom right and
change our Value Readout to Center and Size, you can see that the column headings have
changed and the value in the center cell (the one that WAS low) is now 50. Let’s take a
look at our waveform and we can imagine Center as the location of the horizontal line (our resting
position) running in the middle of the waveform. At 50 it places that line and the wave
exactly in the middle. If i set it to 60, it’s like moving the entire sine wave up and the
top end slightly out of range of the dmx channel. If we lowered our size, its like adjusting
the crest and trough points simultaneously, so if I lower the size down to 80%- I’ve
essentially subtracted 10% off each crest and trough and now our effect runs between 20% and
full. If that math is confusing, then start with your effect centers at 50 and play with the size
cell only until it clicks. And if it’s easier to work with High and Low instead of center and size-
go with that instead. There’s no right or wrong. More than one person has asked me how to write
a CMY effect that you could use to roll from any color into white and back to that color again. They didn’t want to have to write a new
effect for every color in their color pool. A relative effect with a high
value that sets the lights to white makes this no problem, and you
don’t even need to use a preset- unless of course you want to be
specific about the color that is white. In this effect, I’ll leave the Color mixing effect
lines’ low value at 0 and set high to 100. SInce it’s relative - that low value will be whatever
base value I already have on the channels. With our high value at 100 - it will take all the
channels to their highest value - which makes the color white- so this effect will always go
to white from any starting point of color. I know what some of you are thinking right now- If
I took all of my CMY values and set them at 100, I’d get color black- not white… and
you would be absolutely correct. But that’s not exactly the math we’re doing here. In our effect- the attributes are actually RGB,
and since Red Green Blue are the inverse of CMY, a value of 100 on these channels would
equal a value of 0 on CMY…. thus- WHITE. So I can leave this effect running, and switch
to different color presets and you’ll see that we can pick any color to go back and forth to
white. That’s the beauty of a relative effect.
Depending on what kind of attributes your lights
have, you may need to add additional lines for channels like AMBER if you’ve got RGBA fixtures,
or white for RGBW, but the concept is the same. Another thing I like to use high and low values
for is for when I have a movement effect that’s maybe a little too big-like, let’s say that
it’s hitting the video wall - if I tweak the high and low cells, I can work with that until
the size is low enough that I’m off that wall. And if you want to play with this some more- try
setting a range of values for lows and highs… it will spread those values out
over your fixture selection. Phase on a waveform runs 0- 360 degrees
over one complete waveform. And you can think of the Phase assigned to each light as
that light’s starting point on the waveform. For example, in our dimmer effect, we have 6
lights and the phase assigned is 0>360, which is the console’s way of spreading out our lights’
starting point evenly over the wave. If we set the phase of all of our lights to the same value, then
they all have the same starting point and they run the effect in unison. Spreading these starting
points out gives us more of a dynamic look. Let’s take a look at how the console determines
the starting points over that 0 to 360 range. It does mean that the first light’s phase
will be at zero- but the last light in our selection is not actually going to be at 360.
So- why doesn’t it put the last one at 360? Remember how that 0-360 range ran
across the space of one waveform? That means when the next waveform starts, 360 and
0 are at the same place. That would put the first unit in our selection at essentially the same
phase point as the last unit in our selection, so they’d be doing the same thing instead
of having an even spread. To prevent that, the math that the console is actually doing is
it’s dividing 360 by the number of units in your selection and spreading them out by that value.
For example- we have 6 lights in this effect. 360 divided by 6 is 60. So, the first light
has a phase value of 0, the second a phase value of 60 and that increment continues up
to our last unit at a phase of 300… which is exactly 60 degrees from the end of the phase
and the start value of 0 in the next waveform. You don’t have to use 0-360 to spread out
the look of the effect, try using 0>180 or even less to see how starting the phase
of each light earlier changes your effect. And, you can also go above 360. That doesn’t
change how the console treats the degrees of the wave form- it’s more like moving your
starting points over multiple waveforms. If we double the phase to 0-720… that would be like
spreading our starting points over 2 waveforms. On our fixtures, that results in 2 ripples of our
dimmer effect over our selection instead of one. And if you’ve noticed the negative options
like 0 to -360, that will spread out our starting points using the same math, but
just in the opposite order. Again, You can also think of this as flipping the wave form.
There’s also 3 offset phase waveforms built in to the desk. If you’ve ever used the predefined
RGB rainbow- then you were using those 3 forms. See how each phase is offset evenly? They’re
each 120 degrees off from each other. That means we don’t even have to change the
phase cells because it’s built into the form. That offset between our 3 color attributes is what makes this a rainbow and not just a
cycle between white and color black. Width will actually compress the width of the
complete waveform, and it’s easiest to see how this is being handled in the Editor. If I shorten
this sine wave effect by setting the width to 50%, the wave will run completely in half of the
time of our beat, then pause at this middle value for the other half of our beat. Visually,
this sometimes ends up looking a little steppier. Let’s try it again with a COSINE form
instead, and also with a width of 50. Instead of sitting at the middle range of my
channel for half the beat, I’m now spending that time at the HIGH value of my waveform-
so my result is that we’re seeing a lot more lights on than off- and for longer.
Ever have a designer ask you for more negative space in an effect? This means
that they want to see more lights off than on, and using width is one quick way to get there.
Right now, we have the opposite. We have too many lights on because we’re
spending half the beat at our HIGH value. Remember when we were talking about High and
Low Values and I said you could invert them? If I set the High value to be Zero and the low
value to be full... then we’ll end up with more time at a value of zero, thus more negative space.
Want even more time off… just decrease the width. The attack and decay options work with 3 of
our forms: Pulse Width Modulator, random and chase. And these three forms look the same. The
difference is CHASE removes the width option, so everything stays even - like a chase. Random
removes the phase option to keep everything, well, random. But PWM - that form doesn’t get any
restrictions- so let’s work with that. You don’t want to start this form with a width of 100 - that
would result in a straight light and no changes. Starting at a width of 50 gives us an even spacing
between our high and low. Unlike some of the other forms we used today, PWM has no curve. We can
go between our high and low, but instead of a curved wave where we’re running thru values with
smooth acceleration, by default, here, we snap to our high value, spend some time there, and then
snap to our low value, spending some time there as well. If you want to have some crossfade on this
change- that’s where ATTACK and DECAY come in. As I add some attack, you can see the change in
the wave form and also see that the dimmer is fading to full- but still snapping to 0 because
Decay is still at 0. Now, with attack and decay both at 50- we get an even crossfade and equal
amounts of time at the high and low value. Next, if we play with width and we lower it- we
spend more time at the low value (0% in our case) giving us more negative space. But look what
happens if we raise the width- we eventually get to a point where we lose the decay completely
and we’re back to the lights snapping off. So, what if you liked the look of that smaller width -
but again you wanted the opposite- more lights on than off? Let’s go back to that small width…
and then we just swap the high and low values. When you’re using Attack and Decay and adjusting
the speed- remember that speed is increasing the waveform frequency… and that has a direct
affect on attack and decay. as I speed this up- I start to lose my crossfade between the
high and low, so just be aware of that. After attack and decay, our next 3 options
are all about how the effect is gonna apply to our fixture selection. As with all things
on the console- your initial fixture selection is everything. The next 3 options will run their math based off that selection - whether
it was a linear order or a shuffled one. A group set to 1 will treat all units as
if they were the same- and they’ll run the effect in unison- even if you’ve set a range
in phase. A Group of None would give us an even spread over our phase. But, if we set
this to Groups of 2, the math assigns just two points of phase and we get an odd and
even looking effect. A group of 3 treats every first light the same as the fourth light
and the seventh and so on, like an interleave. And you can do a group of a higher number than the
count of fixtures in your selection. If I set this effect for 6 lights to a group of 12 with a phase
0-360, it’s like I’ve just cut that phase in half. Our blocks work just like they
do in our MAtricks : they combine fixtures of our selection to to work as one. This block of 2 sets my first two lights to work
as one, the next 2 lights as a pair and so on. Wings plays with our waveform over our selection.
For example, a wing of 2 is dividing our lights into 2 groups and flipping the direction of
the waveform for our second group. The result makes our effect look symmetrical. A wing of
3 would divide our selection into 3 groups. Let’s take a look at this effect with 15
lights. The first 5 runs our waveform forward, the second runs it in reverse and the third runs
it forward again. It’s not symmetrical, but you can see how the pattern is taking shape. A wing
of 4 divides our selection in 4 groups and flips our waveform for the second and fourth group,
so an even numbered wing can appear symmetrical. There’s also negative wings. We’ve already seen
a wing of 2. If I change this to A negative wing of 2,it still splits our selection in two
with the second group running the waveform in the opposite direction, but then also inverts
the high and low values for that second group. If some of this stuff is starting to feel
like the options from our MAtricks editor, you’re right. In fact, if you have a set
of align groups, blocks or wings already in that editor that you want to use, you can
click TAKE MAtricks and they’ll be applied. It was easiest to show how that math worked with
a linear selection of lights. But, like I said, if you start with a shuffled selection - then your
results are always going to be a bit more random. And there’s actually a middle ground that combines
randomness with a more controlled selection. I like to call this organized chaos. Let’s take a look at some dimmer
effects over multi channel units. First, I’ve got a row of JDC1s running a dimmer effect
that was built by selecting my cells in order. Now I want to change it so that I see each group
of JDC cells running the effect together instead of spread over the whole row. Since I selected
these in order, I can change my blocks to 12 and I get the wave form running on each unit one
at a time. That effect looks pretty organized. This time, for a more chaotic look, I’ve taken the
same settings from that effect , but I shuffled the selection of my cells when I set the Quantity.
Now, if I change this to a block of 12- it still looks pretty random. The math is the same- it’s
just being applied in a different section order. And now, for an example of that organized chaos
that I mentioned.. I want to go back to that first effect- where I selected them in order and
then applied the block… NOW I’ll hit shuffle selection order and the order will be shuffled
with respect to the block I already applied, so I’m getting a random order over my
blocks of cells instead individual cells. The last option in the window has nothing
to do with changing the selection math. If Single Shot is set to YES, this option
tells the wave form to run once and then stop. Here’s a Pulse Width Modulator effect over those
JDCs that rolls the intensity over the row just once. I’ve played with the phase, width, attack
and decay until I got the effect that I wanted. I kinda can’t believe you made it to
the end of this video, I’m impressed. If your brain isn’t too fried yet and
there’s something that didn’t quite click- try playing with these effects and editing
those cells. And definitely try different attributes. Try mixing up different wave
waveforms over different phases with different selections of lights. Experimenting
can really be the best way to learn. So, until I see you next
time- thanks for watching!
