Why Use Lighting Design Software?

[RichardCaswell]

I know I am gonna annoy some of you!

Why do any of you need Lighting Design Computer Programmes?

Lighting Design comes from the 'Heart' 'Feeling' 'Know How'.

No computerised rubbish can ever relace that!

Sit with the Director/Choreographer THINK atmosphere, Acting Areas etc and for pity sake get the focussing right!!

If you cannot do that? Don't call yourself a Lighting Designer, it gives the rest of us a very bad name!

Rich

[mac.calder]

Here is "Why".

 

You are doing a band gig - 15 bands each playing 2 songs. You want to give each band a look, and each song a look. You want the looks to FIT the music. You only have 3 days to bump in and plot. So how do you do it?

 

Sure, I could grab the OLE and create pallets, groups and presets etc and use these to create something during the plotting sessions, but it would not be the best solution. The best solution - the bands send me their music as it will be performed on the night. I whip out a cad program, draw up the venue, position my lights, create my pallets, presets and groups then I listen to the song, design for that song, I can pause the music when I want, relisten to certain parts, cue it up using SMPTE TimeCode if I want etc. Then I play it back. On screen I watch and see what it will look like (roughly)

 

Next on your calendar of events is a theatrical show that will have 1 day bumpin and 1 day sound and light plot which is immediatly followed by a tech rehearsal, it will run for a week. You draw up the stage in your CAD program, place your lights, then read through the script. You then do a rough plot of what you want in each scene and then when you get in the venue, you can load the show file and with the director in toe say "This is what I was thinking" - and adjust it as you go.

 

Basically, CAD packages for lighting are to reduce plotting time in the venue. It is that simple. It is like having the cast and venue at your mercy 24/7.

[Renny]

I know I am gonna annoy some of you!

Why do any of you need Lighting Design Computer Programmes?

Lighting Design comes from the 'Heart' 'Feeling' 'Know How'.

No computerised rubbish can ever relace that!

Sit with the Director/Choreographer THINK atmosphere, Acting Areas etc and for pity sake get the focussing right!!

If you cannot do that? Don't call yourself a Lighting Designer, it gives the rest of us a very bad name!

Rich

 

As a non CAD user as well I know exactly why people use it. It isn't a design aid, it is a drawing aid. You still need the ideas but at the end of the day they have to be drawn. I like paper and a set of stencils, younger people like CAD programmes, Same result. After it's drawn the age old process is the same.

[SimonW]

It isn't a design aid, it is a drawing aid.

 

Exactly.

 

I use CAD to speed up the design process by removing much of the time consuming parts of drafting the plan.

If your design process tends to involve making many radical changes to the plan as it develops, CAD can help

remove the laborious redrawing that pen&paper would require.

If you're expected to produce instrument schedules or colour calls, then CAD can reduce the time take to do so.

If you work with sections & elevations to verify instrument placement, CAD can speed up the process of drawing

up those sections.

 

CAD allows me to do all of these time consuming parts of my job quicker, leaving more time for the actual design.

It may replace the pencil, stencil and drawing board of old - but I don't think it in anyway supplants the heart,

feeling or know how that Richard refers to.

 

Interestingly enough, I tend to use visualisation very rarely. I find that the knowledge and experience of what a

given source will do from a given position with a given colour far more accurate than Wysiwyg's clinical,

off-colour renderings. We're just not, technologically, at a point where you can effectively use a CAD program to

previsualise a theatre show.

 

Simon.

[Ken Coker]

Dear Richard

 

So that we can do the plan and all the concomitant paper work quickly, efficiently and in a form readable and understandable to others. This leaves us more time to :

 

Walk/climb/run in the hills

Sail

Play/watch cricket

Read "The Guardian"

Read interesting books

#### off down the pub and talk to people who don't work in the entertainment industry

 

Errrrr.............have I missed anything? Anycase, I've spent 25 years giving lighting design a bad name....I though that was the point!

 

Cheers

 

Ken

[tuxlux]

I know I am gonna annoy some of you!

Why do any of you need Lighting Design Computer Programmes?

Lighting Design comes from the 'Heart' 'Feeling' 'Know How'.

Looking at your website I notice it says you used "Homestead SiteBuilder". Why use that when you can write in HTML?

Your comments about lighting design, and thinking audience/atmosphere/requirements etc. apply to designing websites and anything else. You need either tools to make or communicate your creative ideas, and computers is just one way of doing this.

 

For some new people it can be a design aid because it allows them to explore a few options, and give them an idea if a fixture is going to be wide enought to cover an area, if they aren't as lucky to have many years of experience with a wide range of fixtures in a wide range of venues. I don't think it can accurately simulate what the output will be, but it can at least at times give an idea, and save lots of work drawing and rubbing out.

 

You don't have to use a Lighting Design Programme if you don't want to. I've not come across any CAD programmes that design lights for you (at least not well anyway). It's just a tool like stencils that take a lot of the drudgery out, and can keep an eye out for careless mistakes.

[tanko]

Well this is a rather intrested topic is it not!

 

I suppose there are pro's and con's for both arguments. I would agree with previous posts suggesting that you can't beat sitting in a venue, with the director/band manager and banging cues in left right and centre.

 

As an avid CAD user I think its brilliant for drawing good clinical plots, especially for rigging and trussing systems, where the measurements have to be bang on, as do the drawings/print off's so the crew boss can follow them. In terms of using it for drawing lighting designs, if you ignore the aspects of rendering and 'pre-visualisation' then I don't think the old school pen and paper comes close. It means you can do as many copies as you like, to the same print quality everytime, as a skilled user it allows you to run plots off very quickly.

 

I find for presentation of Designs when you are bidding against other LD's it allows you give your plot a more of a professional apporach, for example by dropping in your company logo.

 

For the pre-visualisation aspect. I would never do this instead of plotting live in a Venue, but if the plot is drawn correctly it does allow you too get the basic looks/pallets/effects in there. Much like the gig's Mac was talking about, when you have a one day-er (day long in, bit of plotting at tea time, then into the gig) I think it is essential that you have got your basic looks in.

 

I also think you'll find it is becoming more and more a request of the promotor where possible to have something in the console before coming to the first rehersal/gig. Whilst you'll always have to tweak the design, you do have the major aspects of your show in there.

 

I think with the rapid advance in technology you can never replace the human elemet, but you can sure harness the power of CAD/Vectorworks/WYSIWYG and OLE's to improve your chances of getting a design, and making deadlines.

[Nick S]

Aside from the plotting and programming benefits, using something like WYSIWYG or VectorWorks means paperwork can be generated on the fly, which when you're a one man show saves so much time.

[woody74]

I know I am gonna annoy some of you!

 

Yep; when you have 300 dimmers, 600 lights, movers and one LD, all I can say is "Paperwork, paperwork, paperwork" and Excell doesn't cut it. I use CAD for my plot stuff, which is okay, but if I had my way I'd use WYSIWIG or VectorWorks because they are designed for lighting.

 

It's also useful for bugeting and justifying why you need 20 5-degree Source Fours with iris and a hazer; instead of describing it, you can show it.

 

And, you're not suggesting that "Lighting Design Software" actually designs? Design is an art, not a technicality. One can put all of their lights into a program, but if it looks like ####, would you blame the software?

 

And I doubt there is anyone here who doesn't "think" before designing.

 

I call myself a lighting designer,

-w

[dbuckley]

Some lantern manufacturers (including Selecon) are now making fixtures designed for the current practice of WYSIWYG and CAD. Rather than putting the fixture up and focussing it, itplace it in the right place using a tape measure, and set the fixture using its calibrated controls. When you raise your bar to the right height the fixture will work just like it did in WYSIWYG.

 

Now, where di I put that calibrated T-SPOT....

[WiLL]

I do a show every year where the ld plots the entire show before we get into the venue to save time. Obviously he then changes a lot when we're in to tweak it into shape, but it gives him a skeleton to work with. He's already seen a run, talked to choreogreaphers directors etc to get an idea of mood etc. before hand, we like to call this the production meeting and it's really helpful to do this before the plot, software or not. He also uses this time to plot in various effects gfor the movers, like light fans and chases which he can just whack on a pallette so we don't have to sit around for 20 mins whikle the programmer creates them.

so;

why?

to save time.

Why save time?

Because when you're hiring a grade one venue, paying, 20 crew etc..time is an awful lot of money

[Tomo]

Some lantern manufacturers (including Selecon) are now making fixtures designed for the current practice of WYSIWYG and CAD. Rather than putting the fixture up and focussing it, itplace it in the right place using a tape measure, and set the fixture using its calibrated controls. When you raise your bar to the right height the fixture will work just like it did in WYSIWYG.

Except it won't, because there's no way you can physically adjust or hang a light that accurately.

All it takes is for the clamp to be a couple of degrees off vertical, or the bar to hang off-vertical and the focus will move a fair distance!

I don't know about you, but 'nearest foot' just isn't a good enough tolerance.

 

However, it will produce a starting point - dunno whether it would really be worth it though, as it's faster to rig if (say) all the Source4 19deg are interchangable.