It is great that the visualizer is part of Beam 2.0. Two questions:
how do I start the visualizer if it does not show up? and
how can I keep the visualizer window on top of the Live window? Same question btw for keeping the Beam interface on top next to the visualizer? Thank you in advance
Let me be more precise:
when I open Playground in Beam 2.0, Ableton Live starts with the Playground fixtures etc and the visualizer window open, and connected, and showing the virtual lights
However, if I want to start from an existing Live Set, and then add Beam instruments to it with a newly created BEAM patch, the visualizer is not present. I can see in Live that the Beam instruments work
Indeed, the visualizer only opens when you launch the demo or playground set. It probably makes a lot of sense to add a button somewhere to launch the visualizer without changing the fixture patch and Live Set. I’ll write it down as an improvement!
But for now, the easiest workaround is to first open the playground set so that the visualizer launches, and then load your own Live Set.
As for keeping the visualizer on-top of Live, unfortunately the visualizer is built by https://www.capture.se so we don’t have control over that. Sorry about that.
Thx Hidde. This opens the Visualiser, but the Visualiser does not show the other patches. It seems to be configured only for the Demo and Playground patches. Also your suggestion to open playground first and the load my own patch does connect my patch to Visualizer. Any other advice? Thanks in advance. Peter
The demo set and playground visualizers we ship with Beam are indeed configured for the demo and playground patches. These are ‘runtime’ versions of the application called Capture (https://www.capture.se). If you want to visualize your own lighting rigs, you’d need to use the standalone version of Capture or another visualizer.
It might be worth looking into Capture Student Edition, which is a free version of Capture that has a limited fixture library but allows editing and visualizing your lighting rig for free.
Somewhere else on this forum, Luka mentioned that the Capture Student licence won’t do. Anyway, I do have Capture 2023 full version. Can you please remind me how to set up Beam with Capture? I remember there was a great set-up explanation by Jean-Paul Grobben years ago, but can’t find it back. I also believe there were install instructions in the manual of the previous version of Beam… Can you find that back? thx!
The free-for-all Capture Student edition works well with Beam, but comes with a limited set of available fixtures and cannot open files made with the full version.
However, if you already have the full version, that’s probably not something you are looking for.
Since Beam for Live 2, you can now output DMX to Capture via CITP, which is much more straightforward than via Art-Net, as the startup order of applications does not matter and you don’t have to specify an IP address.
This also allowed us to bundle the Beam Demo project with Beam (rather than having to download it from the website & having to download the full Capture Demo from Capture’s website) and the instructions were adapted to take both of these two changes into account.
When working with your own Fixture Patches and virtual lighting rigs in Capture, all it takes is:
In Beam go to Inputs/Outputs and add a CITP Visualizer Output (add more than 1 if you have more than 1 Universe in your Fixture Patch/Capture project):
Capture usually automatically detects and maps any incoming CITP universes, so you should now already be able to control your virtual lights. If not, you can select them manually - in Capture go to Window > Universes… and select the relevant universe under External universes:
Hi Luka, I am sorry, but I am still having difficulties.
I now have BEAM connected to Capture with CITP. But the fixtures I created (and patched) in Capture don’t show up in BEAM.
The fixture that I created and patched in BEAM does show up in the patch list of Capture. When I turn on that lamp in BEAM, the Capture patch overview turns it to 100%, but I don’t see the fixture in the visualizer (neither its location nor the light beam itself).
It’s probably something stupid I forgot. Any advice?
It would be great if you could make a workflow video walking through the description above, starting from an empty BEAM project, and starting from a brand new Capture project
I now have BEAM connected to Capture with CITP. But the fixtures I created (and patched) in Capture don’t show up in BEAM.
Patching fixtures in Capture doesn’t automatically patch them in Beam or the other way around - you need to do this in both applications separately.
When I turn on that lamp in BEAM, the Capture patch overview turns it to 100%, but I don’t see the fixture in the visualizer (neither its location nor the light beam itself).
In Capture, make sure you are in the Live view and that the fixture is not pointing away from the camera. If you cannot find the fixture, select it in the Fixtures tab so it becomes highlighted, and adjust the camera so that you can see the lighting beam.
You can also try adjusting Ambient lighting in the View tab, so that you can see fixtures even when there is no light in the scene:
It would be great if you could make a workflow video walking through the description above, starting from an empty BEAM project, and starting from a brand new Capture project
