Ideas on color management and color selection (e. g., half-colors)

[sfk010477]

Hello everyone,

since I got my W1 only two weeks ago, my first action was to update it to FW 2.0 - and I really appreciate the efforts the dev team already put into it, although my MHs show the same blackout issue that Kevin88 already reported in viewtopic.php?p=3948#p3948 .

There is one bit for me though that has kept my mind busy the last days, as I want to get the maximum out of my fixtures, and wanted to share my thoughts. If these are appreciated, maybe they will make it into a future release.

1.) Stop adding new hard-coded color channels.

The number of LED colors is growing. The new firmware allows RGBW, RGB+ with lime, amber, and UV, but LED technology will always be ahead. The Chauvet DJ Kinta HP features an RGBW plus a CMYO = cyan/magenta/yellow/orange LED (see https://de.chauvetdj.com/wp-content/upl ... v1_ML6.pdf ). Lumiled now also makes mint LEDs with a greenish white (see https://lumileds.com/company/blog/lime- ... uminaires/) which I would love to see on a fixture for ambient lighting. Many other fixtures (including my strobes) contain WW/CW LEDs. Adding more and more hard-coded color channels is a race no-one can win.

Therefore, my first suggestion is to use polygonal color mixing across the CIE u'v' color space (see http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hb ... e1976.html for a nice reproduction including white color temperatures). This is similar to the transition of audio equalizers from fixed octave-band control to parametric control. For each color channel in a fixture, the Profile Builder should allow setting the wavelength of a uni-color channel (like red, amber, green) or the color temperature or u'v' position of a 'white' channel. The color mixing algorithm of the W1 would then span a polygon around the given color endpoints to limit the color selection (a red-green bi-color laser would thereby limit color selection to a line between both ends) and mix the color channel outputs by a least-error algorithm to obtain any chosen user color. This would also allow the different whites (CW, NW, WW, mint) to blend in naturally.

2.) Poinently add 'black' to the color grid.

/Edit: I have found a way to trick the W1 to black: in Hue mode, set all values (hue, saturation, RGB, and WAL) to 0 - the W1 will state 'black'

With my old DMX controller, I was able to quite simply create retro style segmented chases like [red]-[blue]-[off]-[yellow]-[green]-[off]. It is possible to build a 'black' color through manually editing (shift-click) a color for a group and by setting all RGBW channels to 0, but the hue and naming will remain at the color of the last channel turned to zero, thereby also keeping the pad illumination color.

I know what you will be saying: a black channel would break the logic of the color pads that show inactive colors dimmed and active colors in full brightness. But as 'black' is somewhat special, the illumination of a 'black' color pad could also be special. And that brings me to my third idea:

3.) Add half-color / multi-color colors to the W1.

Many scanners and moving heads allow a half-color setting of the color wheel, and quite a few derbys I know (such as the Cameo Superfly HP) and spider effects with multiple single-color LEDs only allow color mixing through one color channel. For the Superfly HP, I have attached the table for your reference below:

000 - 007 Red
008 - 015 Green
016 - 023 Blue
024 - 031 White
032 - 039 Amber
040 - 047 Red / Green
048 - 055 Red / Blue
056 - 063 Red / White
064 - 071 Red / Amber
072 - 079 Green / Blue
[...]
224 - 231 Green / Blue / White / Amber
232 - 239 Red / Green / Blue / White / Amber
240 - 255 automatic colour change

The Profile Builder already supports this (currently at least up to four colors) with a really intuitive picking mechanism and auto-created color icons. The Profile Builder also has rainbow icons for three internal color chases.

Now imagine being able to intuitively select e. g., red and white as effect colors for a color chase on a group of PAR cans and just hit the color pad that is flicking red-white (preferably in sync with the BPM blip) to get a full bouquet for red *and* white beams from your derbys... Of course, if you wanted the derbys to also alternate between red and white as your PAR cans, you would simply tap both single-color pads and enable Color FX on that group, too...

You read correctly: for half-color or multi-color selections, I ask for the corresponding pads to flick between the programmed colors. Additionally, the buttons could e. g., rainbow-fade for in-fixture chases of given colors. For an active 'black' color selection, the pad could slightly pulse white, which competes my circle of ideas.

What do you say?

Best regards,
Sebastian

[GregorCologne]

Hi Sebastian,

Thanks for putting all those thoughts into this. As we're currengly getting loads of requests and are still behind in answering, just a simple reply for now, at least in terms of no. 1). I'll note this down and try to reply in a more advanced way later on, and might also talk to the devs in that regard. Here we go:

1.) Yes, you're totally right, things are about to change currently, away from traditional RGB (resp. RGBWAU) to more 'open' color mixing options. But the new Wolfmix update even features one function that already goes into that direction - even if it's still based on 'hard-coded' color formats:



In the "HUE" section of the color picker screen (see above), you will find the values "R G B" and "W A L". Here you can freely mix your traditional RGB colors with some "newer" extra colors, white, amber and lime. As we've mentioned in the recent FW2.0 forum post, this, for instance, allows for much more realistic (and vivid) colors like for simulating 'fire' effects - only if your hardware supports those, of course.


2.) Black is another good idea but of course you can do that just on your own by just turning down all colors. But most users probably won't think about that option if there's no specific "black" as chooseable option. (When I used my Wolfmix in a club, I also added black and very dark red etc., with such "gaps" you can trigger some additional effects which are not specifically available if you only use bright "full" colors.


3.) Yeah, that's a tiresome topic, we've already though about this several times but it's not that simple to implement this. You need to create new icons for instance, and the memory of the device is not limitless, and you can't represent those half-colors.with the soft buttons. But yes, it's noted. Again.

[sfk010477]

Hello Gregor,

thank you for releasing my first post and for your reply. Regarding point three: you say that there is no representation for half-colors in the soft buttons. That is exactly my point: if the soft-buttons were to alternate between the two half-color tones every bpm blip, we could clearly differentiate them from the static colors and include them in our chases...

Best regards,
Sebastian