Sunlite Suite
Fade between scenes
It is possible to fade from one scene to another one. For instance, this is really useful to go from one position to another one very slowly, to open/close the dimmer of your lights...A few things need to be checked before to start programming our 2 scenes. First of all the "FADE" function must be allowed on the channels we want to use. To do so, we open the "Page Settings..." window from the menu and we go to the "Channels" tab (see below).
All the channels of our page are listed in the list situated on the left side of the window. We want to make a fade between 2 positions, so we must enable the "FADE" function on Pan&Tilt channels for all our fixtures. Please note that the function is already enable on Pan&Tilt channels...however this is good to see how to do it. Now it is time to create our 2 scenes. In the previous chapter we saw how to create a scene "As you see now"...we will use the same function and create the scenes using the TAKE buttons.
Once the "Fade" function has been selected, we can setup the fade times. Please keep in mind that the channels can have their levels increasing (Fade In) or decreasing (Fade Out):
- Time before fade In : Time between the call of the scene and the beginning of the Fade In
- Time of Fade In : Fade In time
- Time before fade Out : Time between the call of the scene and the beginning of the Fade Out
- Time of Fade Out : Fade Out time
Here, we can leave the default settings which are 5 seconds for the Fade In/Out times and no time before Fade In/Out. We can click on OK when it is finished and our first scene is now ready to be used. Let us create the 2nd one and call it "Scene 2". To do so, we release all the buttons in our page (double click on INIT) and we call the "Scene 1". Then we use the TAKE buttons to setup a different position for each fixture and we save the scene with the "As you see now function". Now we just have to setup the Fade times (as we did with the 1st one) and we are ready to fade from our "Scene 1" to our "Scene 2".
When a fade is running, the following window appears and shows you the FADE IN (left, red) and the FADE OUT (right, blue). This window allows to make a break, to increase the speed of the fade, to jump to the end of the fade or to go back to the beginning. Please note that you can make this window visible or not by clicking on "Fade" from the "Windows" menu.
Please keep in mind that the FADE function is not available on channels which have been programmed with the ON/OFF mode. This is very useful to make some channels fading or not in a scene. Imagine you want to fade from one position to another one with your fixtures but you want to change the gobo without fading in the same scene. The gobo channel must be programmed with the ON/OFF mode, or the FADE function (Page Settings window) must be disable on this channel.