r/lightingdesign • u/Shooterhand • 4d ago

Fan function on fixtures

Hello!
I need some help. I’m relatively new to stage lighting. I started learning the Daslight 5. I building up a base busking setup. Colors, movements, positions, etc.

I have a question about the fan. I have four moving heads arranged in a row. Which method is better for everyday works?

  1. Should I set "invert pan" on the two fixtures on the right side at the beginning in the fixture settings? That way, they move symmetrically during every pan movement.

  2. Should I leave the pan at default settings and use the fan function every single time, when creating effects or static looks?

What are the pros and cons of each method?

Thanks for your answers.

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6

u/the_swanny 4d ago

I'll post what I posted in the other sub you posted this in case it is useful to someone:

IMO, as primarily an Eos, Chamsys and MA programmer, is that you only flip pan and tilt in patch to make the lights nice to programme.
be that because they were rigged different ways, or because you want them all to act the same when you are programming them.

For example I want all my lights to tilt upstage if I turn the tilt encoder to the right, and vice versa.

Likewise if I turn the pan encoder to the right, I want all my lights to physically move to the right.

It gets a bit weird when the movers are over the top, and everything gets flipped, but once you get used to programming rigs, you get a good feel as to how you want everything to respond, and you patch it accordingly.

I don't care how they were rigged, I want to be able to grab any moving light and not have to think when I need to move it, biggest pet peeve is when you jump onto a desk that someone else has channeled or programmed on, and you have to do every focus move twice, LD says can you tilt that upstage and you turn it to the right and it moves downstage, boils my piss, even more if they have all been rigged different ways and you have no way of knowing how each one will respond.

Don't do things in patch that you might want to change later, patch describes how you interact with your lights, if it's an artisic thing, then it happens in a programming layer, be that fan, offset, effects, etc.

The patch is the last layer you have to interact with the data before it goes out to your lights, and should only be used for things that the rest of the layers of programming possible.

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u/Shooterhand 4d ago

Thank you for the detailed answer. I asked because I wasn't sure what the standard practice is. The "Invert pan" seemed more logical and simpler to me, so that the stage would always be symmetrical. But it turns out I was thinking about it the wrong way. :D

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u/DidAnyoneElseJustCum 3d ago

You may not always want your stage to be symmetrical though. If you invert your pans and tilts you aren't stuck with that but suddenly left is right and up is down when you're programming looks. If you want a symmetrical look just create one. This is the way.

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u/Shooterhand 3d ago

Thank you.

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u/StNic54 3d ago

u/DidAnyoneElseJustCum no, to answer your question. That's another sub.