Lighting design software

[swilly]

Hi, back again looking for some advice.

We are a small touring theatre company and have moved from drama into staging music events, folk, rock, brass bands! We are in a wide range of differing venues, cathedrals, churches, coventional small theatre spaces and school halls.

 

The rock bands are usually booked with their own lights as they know what they are about but we would like to look at possible lighting setups on the computer for other groups before getting-in. Can anyone suggest a suitable and easy to understand software programme that, ideally, lets us see things in 3D? We run a 24 Alcora board and everything we have is DMX. We have some moving heads and these have their own desk.

 

We looked at Softplot and Stage Research and nearly acquired Showxpress until we read opinions on this site so any suggestions for a easy to understand programme would be very welcome.

Thanks.

[jhaynes199]

You could try WYSIWYG. This will let you do all your plans and put them in 3D (if you have WYSIWYG Perform). It does come with a price though, you're looking at about £800.

 

However, you are looking at wanting to attach this to your desk and let the desk output WYSIWYG. For this you would need WYSIWYG Console Edition which is about £2000 which may be out of your budget.

 

Great for pre-plotting, but be aware you need to create the venue plots each time you go to a different venue. These take time and you need to have all the venue specifications.

 

And make sure you record using groups! So you can tweak your show once you see the lights live - as very often this can look quite different to what is outputted on a computer screen!

 

Good luck

[swilly]

You could try WYSIWYG. This will let you do all your plans and put them in 3D (if you have WYSIWYG Perform). It does come with a price though, you're looking at about £800.

 

However, you are looking at wanting to attach this to your desk and let the desk output WYSIWYG. For this you would need WYSIWYG Console Edition which is about £2000 which may be out of your budget.

 

Great for pre-plotting, but be aware you need to create the venue plots each time you go to a different venue. These take time and you need to have all the venue specifications.

 

And make sure you record using groups! So you can tweak your show once you see the lights live - as very often this can look quite different to what is outputted on a computer screen!

 

Good luck

 

Thanks for that - will have a look.

[tanko]

G'day

 

Very much agree with all the above. WYG is the best pre-visulaisation software around. Although I would suggest that its a little more expensive than the prices above.

 

I would suggest buying wysiwyg perform, and 1 x wyg-it2 box's (a USB to DMX interface) is the way forward. I thought console edition was a package that was bundeled with consoles, and not sold seperatly, although I could be very much wrong! ( I am sure Andy M, at AC will correct me)

 

I reckon at list price and inc VAT it will set you back around £2877, you also have to take into account, if you want to keep upto date, it helps to pay the yearly subscrption fee which for perform it think is around £300....(I admit I haven't done mine yet, I'll pay the tax man first!)

 

Best bet is to have a chat with Andy Mahaffy at AC lighting.

 

ta

Tank

 

edit - spelling!!!

[Andy_Hook]

Give Capture a try as well - you can get a free fully-featured demo from www.capturesweden.com. It's available from £675, so a bit cheaper than WYSIWYG, and there's no annual fees!! You can get DMX directly from pretty much any ethernet-enabled desk (or from Avolites desks using their ACDI protocol). For 'lower-end' desks you can use a variety of USB-DMX interfaces including the plug-and-play Enttec Pro box which is £95.

 

Make sure you check out the movie manuals at www.capturesweden.com/manual/manual_index.htm which should get you going pretty quickly.

 

Oh, and everything's available to buy on-line at www.shockshop.co.uk!

 

Let me know if you've got any questions, more than happy to help!

[Tomo]

As far as previsualisation is concerned, the best two are WYSIWYG and Capture

 

Both offer free demo downloads so you can try them out and make your choice.

 

Capture is cheaper and runs faster (on nVidia graphics cards), WYSIWYG is more photorealistic.

[JPSTechie]

Where can you get the free demo's of both programs from?

 

Thanks

 

Mark

[Calder]

Google is your friend

 

http://www.cast-soft.com/cast/software/home.jsp

 

http://www.stagetec.co.uk/php/index.php?se...&parentid=3

 

C.

[Tomo]

Where can you get the free demo's of both programs from?

www.capturesweden.com/

www.cast-soft.com

 

Under the "Downloads" links.

[Andy_Hook]

The Stagetec website you've shown there is out-of-date - the current version of Capture is 2005. Full details (and the latest demo!) are available at www.capturesweden.com or our e-commerce store - www.shockshop.co.uk.

 

Any questions - give us a call in the office - 08456 449430.

 

For your info - once you've bought a licence for Capture you're entitled to free updates which are released pretty much every month!

[JPSTechie]

Thanks.

[Leggy]

To throw another one into the mix...

 

ESP Vision gives easily the best pre-visualisation, however you need a seperate cad program such as Vectorworks or 3ds Max to create your drawing, so it can get quite expensive, as well as a lot of new software to learn

 

There's also a new kid on the block, Lightconverse, but I have yet to hear any user reports on that one. If anyone here knows it I'd like to hear about their experiences.

 

For all round usefulness and ease of learning you can't really beat WYSIWYG, although the pre-vis can get quite confusing if you are programming a lot of fixtures.

 

Leggy

[swilly]

To throw another one into the mix...

 

ESP Vision gives easily the best pre-visualisation, however you need a seperate cad program such as Vectorworks or 3ds Max to create your drawing, so it can get quite expensive, as well as a lot of new software to learn

 

There's also a new kid on the block, Lightconverse, but I have yet to hear any user reports on that one. If anyone here knows it I'd like to hear about their experiences.

 

For all round usefulness and ease of learning you can't really beat WYSIWYG, although the pre-vis can get quite confusing if you are programming a lot of fixtures.

 

Leggy

Thanks to everyone for your replies - WYSIWYG looks favourite so we are off to AC Lighting in Leeds - we work on the KISS principle and they are nearby if or should that be when we get stuck!

Cheers.

[Paul_R]

My opinion for whats its worth!

Personally I think Capture is looking like the best real-time visualisation tool.

 

If you want nice pictures and can wait for the rendering to be done, then buy WYSIWYG.

If you want to actually plot a show virtually then I would suggest Capture:

 

Capture is cheaper than WYSIWYG.

 

I found it easier to pick up and learn/use, i.e. I was able to start using Capture, but I had to actually follow the tutorial for WYSIWYG.

 

Depending on your point of view, Capture is a lot more flexible about fixture placement to see what it will look like.. i.e. you can put a fixture in mid air if you want, none of this hanging points etc.

 

In your scenario you probably don't need the other capabilities of WYSIWYG. i.e. you are paying for more than you will use.

 

Capture does have frequent updates, but thats only because the feature set is building, rather than the fact is a mature product like WYSIWYG. If Capture does everything you need at the moment, all well and good.

 

If you buy the Advanced version of Capture (still cheaper than WYSIWYG) you can build a stand-alone executable that you could send to groups in question that displays the lighting state and they can see the 'model' by 'flying' around the view.

 

Capture also supports 'Scenes' which enable you to have different set objects hidden or visible.

 

Capture Advanced also has motion controllers (x-y-z space) so you can move objects about. This is patched as a DMX control.

 

P.S. I have not looked at WYSIWYG for about a year so some features may have changed.

P.P.S. I'm not connected to Capture or am I the UK Distributer (not that I am suggesting he is biased)!!!