Whatever DMX interface you have, there's a good chance that Lightkey supports it—simply download Lightkey for free, plug in your interface, and give it a try.
Hey guys, brand new light guy here. Working with a non-profit on a very small, low budget setup.
I would love to use martin's M-PC (we have their M-DMX) to program. Is there a simple low-cost visualizer we can use instead of show designer? Like on the quality of Chauvet's ShowExpress's built in one, no frills no whistles etc. Literally just something that shows color and movement.
I don't need objects or any of the other fancy stuff SD does. Either that or is there a decent way to do movement in Chamsys MagicQ? I can't seem to get curves to work as easily as they do in Martin or ShowExpress.
Yeah, but it's not too difficult. The sACN capture script makes the DMX data available to other scripts within Unity.
You can make a simple model that's just a cylinder, attach a light to it pointing out the top. Then you can use a script on the light to set the RGB color from DMX, or enumerate the different color the light has in its color wheel, and return the correct value from the appropriate DMX address. Same for rotation, which is an easily accessable property of GameObjects. I developed this for some corporate shows where we wanted the lighting console to be able to control the virtual scene of some corporate logos as well as awards.
The output from a live rendering machine was piped into the media server and out to the screens. There were lights which only existed virtually within unity, and the console had full control over them.
As a CAD program it isn't great. It can do basic things fine, but for large complex stages and rooms you're better off building your stage in sketchup or another program and importing it into capture and adding your lights to that.
It works as a good visualizer. It's fairly accurate for previz and it looks good.
It's nowhere near WYSIWYG but it's a fraction of the cost if you do decide to purchase it down the road. You can enable artnet output on your console and Capture can respond to it. It also has some tools built in to control the lights with out a console if you just need to create a quick look to pitch to clients/directors. I use it for my shows now and does what I need it to do. If you find your self needing for functionality down the road, the basic edition is $500 and is a great entry point.