Fixture for Fun Generation Mr Beam 120W

Beam for Live
1

Hi There !
I’m new to Beam and I can’t find any existing profile for my light device, which is a Fun Generation Mr Beam 120W, composed of 4 moving heads.
Did anyone already created this specific fixture ? If not, how shall I process to create it ?
Thanks a lot for your help,
Noémie

2

I tried to create a fixture, but I can’t find it in Ableton Live, I don’t understand how you import your fixtures in Ableton…I can see the Beam Plugin folder, containing the beam effects and beam instruments, but no fixtures there… Can anyone help me?

3

Hi Noémie,

Thanks for reaching out!

Here are the fixture profile files for the 46-channel mode (which should give you the finest control over your fixture):

  1. Set the fixture to the 46-channel mode.

  2. Place these into the Fixture Profiles/User folder, which you can find by going to Beam > Fixture Profiles… (it is located in the ~/Library/Application Support/Showsync/Beam) and restart Beam.

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  3. Add the fixture to your Beam patch (don’t assign any tags to it just yet).

  4. Double-click on the added fixture and assign a separate tag to the Total fixture component for controlling parameters that apply for all the fixture cells, and another tag to all the Head components.

  5. In Live, add a separate Generic device for controlling the modulations of the Total tag and another device for controlling the Heads. You can set the Intensity of the device controlling the Total tag to always be at 100% (this also the default for this fixture if you don’t add a device to control this tag) and just control intensity using the device controlling the Head tags.

  6. You can now use MIDI notes (corresponding to the notes set in the Beam patch) to trigger envelopes for the chosen modulation parameters of individual moving heads. You can also use the LFO device with a Spread set to something else than 0% for simple chase effects with an LFO phase offset for every moving head.

  7. If you want to program automation for every cell individually, add a separate tag for every moving head in Beam and add a dedicated device for it.

Let me know if this works for you and/or if you need a profile for another mode of this fixture.

4

Hi Luka,

Thank you so much for your help !

So I created 2 MIDI tracks, one for the “total tag” generic device, and one for the “head tag” generic device.

What I don’t get is : how can I control heads separately ? I thought I would have one generic device with the “head” tag, and that in the parameters, I would find red1, red2, red3, red4, pan1, pan2 etc… But there are only the global parameters, for the 4 heads at the same time.

So how does it work ? In my beam patch, I only have one midi note for the head patch, C3. Should I have, instead of 1, 4 MIDI tracks with 4 different tags (head1, head2, head3, head4) triggered by 4 different MIDI notes in 4 different head fixtures ? Because if they’re not different, how can they have effect on different heads ? Can you make these 4 different fixtures for me ? (Head1, head 2, head 3, head 4) Or maybe I get this wrong and I missed something on the way…

Sorry for my stupidity …

Thanks again so much for your PRECIOUS help !

Noémie

5

Hi Noémie,

What I don’t get is : how can I control heads separately ?

This is a very legitimate question.

  • You can control heads separately by triggering modulation envelopes with MIDI notes assigned to the fixtures in your patch. If you selected all the 4 Head fixtures in the patch before giving them a Heads tag, you will notice that every fixture has a different MIDI pitch assigned to it:

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    Example patch: Mr Beam - Test Patch 1.sbp

    In a Generic device you can then select 2 modulation parameters that MIDI notes will trigger envelopes for:

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  • If you want to be able to control Intensity/dim, color, pan and tilt of each moving head individually using Live parameters (automatable & mappable dials), you need to manually assign a unique tag to each head:

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    Example patch: Mr Beam - Test Patch 2.sbp

    In Live, add a separate device for every head. to keep things contained, you could group the devices into one instrument rack with 5 chains/devices:

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Please let me know if you are able to make things work with one of these two ways & feel free to ask more questions if something is still unclear.

By the way, as far as this goes:

I thought I would have one generic device with the “head” tag, and that in the parameters, I would find red1, red2, red3, red4, pan1, pan2 etc…

I agree something along these lines would be nice to have and improving the workflow with individual fixtures in a tag is on our list, so thanks for bringing this up!

6

Hi again Luka !

Thanks a million, it works perfectly now ! You are my hero ! :slight_smile:
There is one last little tiny problem, there is only one parameter that doesn’t work for neither of the heads, the “white intensity”. All the other parameters are perfectly ok, but not the white.
I checked in your fixture channels, everything is ok.
I really don’t know where can be the problem.
Can you help me again ? :wink:
Thanks a lot
Noémie

7

Happy to hear things are now working!

About the white intensity - please see RGBW not sending white parameter - #2 by Luka and RGBW not sending white parameter - #7 by Luka

To sum up: when you set a color using the red+green+blue combination via the RGB/HSL color picker or by selecting those modulations individually, Beam will automatically adjust the white intensity, when using a fixture profile that uses the RGBW colorspace, which is the case for the profile I made for your fixture.
While you then cannot control the white channel directly using the white keyword, the resulting colors will generally be more accurately represented this way.
If you still prefer to have direct manual control over the white channel, let me know and I will make a fixture profile that allows for that.

8

Hi Luka,

Thanks again for these explanations.
I understand, but it would be quite convenient for me to be able to have direct control over the white channel. Would you make me a fixture profile for that ?
Thanks a lot again,
Noemie

9

Here you go! Let me know if this works as expected.

Fun Generation Mr. Beam 120W - 46ch RGB+W.sbf (775 Bytes)
Fun Generation Mr. Beam 120W - 46ch (total).sbf (1.2 KB)
Fun Generation Mr. Beam 120W - 46ch (head) RGB+W.sbf (1.7 KB)