Matrix Effect

The Matrix effect plays a 2D image inside a rectangle drawn on a Stageview, and maps it onto the color channels of whatever fixtures sit under the rectangle. It needs a Stageview: without one there is nothing to draw the rectangle on and nothing to sample.

Parameters

Everything else on the editor depends on which effect type you pick.

Choosing a Stageview and an effect type

Pick the Stageview first. The rectangle only appears on that Stageview, and only fixtures placed on it can be sampled. If you switch Stageviews, the rectangle moves to the new one and any fixtures that aren't placed there drop out of the effect.

The effect type is one of eleven, listed below. Switching types resets its parameters to that type's defaults.

The rectangle

The rectangle appears on the chosen Stageview while the effect is selected. Position, size and rotation are all free, none of it snaps to the grid unless you hold Shift. That's different from fixture rotation, which moves in 90 degree steps.

Direction

Every effect that travels runs bottom to top in the rectangle's own local space, and rotating the rectangle is how you get every other direction. That's why no effect type has an angle parameter: the angle is however you've turned the rectangle. Rain is the one exception, since it falls, so it runs top to bottom in the rectangle's own space, and rotating the rectangle still redirects it.

Radial and Spiral don't travel in a straight line, so a negative Speed means something different for them: it reverses them instead. Radial contracts toward the center rather than expanding from it, and Spiral spins the other way.

Point Sample and Area Average

Point Sample reads the exact color at the fixture's center. It works well once the rectangle's resolution roughly matches your fixture spacing, and it keeps every edge in a pattern sharp.

Area Average instead blends several probes on concentric rings inside a radius you set, in grid units. It smooths over noise and fine detail that Point Sample would miss or flicker on, at the cost of slightly softer edges. Reach for it on textured types like Plasma, Color Noise and Fire; Point Sample is usually enough for hard-edged types like Bars, Chase and Strobe.

There are three quality steps:

More probes average over a wider area, smoothing the read further. Medium is a reasonable default; drop to Low if you want sharper edges out of Area Average, or raise to High for the smoothest possible field.

Effect types

Wait and Transition, the two timing fields, only appear for Color Sweep. Every other type paces itself with its own Speed or Rate instead, which can run on the beat with Beat Sync, covered below.

Color Sweep

Color Sweep steps through a color list. Each color holds the whole rectangle for its Wait, then a hard front crosses from the bottom edge to the top over its Transition, with the next color behind the front and the current one still ahead of it. The edge is hard: Transition is how long the wipe takes to cross, not a crossfade, and a Transition of 0 is an instant step.

Loop decides what happens at the ends of the list. With Loop on, the sweep cycles: after the last color's transition, it wipes straight into the first. With Loop off, the effect wipes the first color in from nothing and the last color out to nothing, then stays empty until the effect restarts.

Each color entry can override Wait and Transition with its own value instead of the effect's defaults.

Chase

Chase runs one band the length of the rectangle, over and over. It's the effect to reach for on a bar or a truss.

With Ping Pong off, the band wraps around once it reaches the far end and takes the next color in the list on each restart. With it on, the band reverses direction at each end instead, which reads as a bounce, and it takes the next color on every reversal rather than every full pass.

Sparkle

Sparkle fires individual cells at random and lets them decay.

Cell interacts with your rig's spacing: a cell smaller than the gap between your fixtures means some sparks land between fixtures and are never seen. The default of 2 grid units matches one fixture box, a reasonable starting point for most rigs.

The color list

Types use the color list one of two ways. Some blend it into a smooth gradient across the field: Color Noise, Plasma, Fire and Spiral. The rest assign consecutive colors to consecutive elements, wrapping back to the first once the list runs out: each bar in Bars, each ring in Radial, each pass of Chase, each flash of Strobe, and each spark and drop in Sparkle and Rain.

Seed appears for Color Noise, Plasma, Fire, Rain and Sparkle, the types built on noise or randomness. It's randomized when the effect is created and stored with it. The dice button next to it rerolls it.

Beat Sync

Turn on Beat Sync, next to a type's own parameters, and its Speed or Rate stops meaning "per second" and starts meaning "per beat" of the Beat Master. The number, the step and the default all stay the same; only what "per" means changes. A Chase at the default Speed of 20 grid units per second becomes 20 grid units per beat. A Strobe at Rate 8 flashes eight times per beat instead of eight times per second, which at a typical dance tempo reads as strobing on the eighth note. A Spiral at Speed 0.3 turns 0.3 of a revolution per beat rather than per second.

Every type but Color Sweep offers the switch. Color Sweep already reaches the Beat Master by setting Wait or Transition to Beat instead of Time.

Setting it up

Beat Sync needs a Beat Master actually running to mean anything. Point the effect at one with the Beat Master dropdown at the top of its editor, or leave it on From Scene or Master to inherit whichever Beat Master the surrounding Scene or the project default is using. Then turn on Beat Sync in the type's own box, lower down, next to its Speed or Rate.

Tempo changes

Beat Sync, and Color Sweep's own beat typed Wait and Transition, read the Beat Master's current tempo on every frame. A tempo change mid effect reapplies the new beat length across the whole time that has already elapsed, so the effect's position jumps to match the new pace rather than gliding into it.

For a change that glides instead, use the effect's SpeedMaster: a SpeedMaster change shifts the rate of a running effect smoothly, without moving its phase. Beat Sync and SpeedMaster don't stack: once Beat Sync governs a type's clock, its SpeedMaster has nothing left to scale.

Fixtures

An empty Fixtures list means every fixture in the chosen Stageview. This is the opposite of every other effect, where an empty list means nothing runs. Fill the list in when you want to exclude fixtures that happen to stand inside the rectangle.

Shared settings

Like every effect, a Matrix effect also has Beat Master and SpeedMaster at the top of its editor. See the Effects Panel.

Blending and transparency

A Matrix effect blends against whatever rendered underneath it rather than replacing it, and Matrix effects stack on top of each other the same way.

Several types leave empty space transparent instead of black, so that space shows the look underneath: the gaps in Bars, everything outside the band in Chase, the dark half of Strobe, unlit cells in Sparkle, everything off a streak in Rain and the top of Fire as the heat dies out. If you expected black there, this is why it isn't: the rig underneath is showing through.

Phase does not apply to a Matrix effect. Every other effect uses Phase to spread a waveform across a fixture list, but the rectangle already does that spatially: where a fixture sits relative to the rectangle is what phases it.

Preview resolution

The Stageview's live preview of the rectangle has its own resolution setting, in Settings under Appearance. It only controls how finely the preview is drawn in the Stageview and never affects the DMX output.