LED Mapping

LED mapping, also known as pixel mapping, allows you to convert pixels into DMX data. Especially to control LED strips or LED matrixes, but also individual lights or sunstrips.

• Principle
• Properties
• Custom Fixtures
• Curves

Principle

First, create a DMX layer by clicking on the triangle icon in the bottom-left corner :

Note that you can create DMX layer both in dashboard and timelines.

Also, DMX layer will always be on top of other layers :

Indeed, they use the content of layers below them :

In this case, the DMX layer is converting 8x4 = 32 RGB pixels into DMX data, continuously updating the value of 32x3 = 96 DMX channels.
 This can control a 8x4 LED matrix for example.

Please note that DMX layers can be used in a timeline, and this timeline can be embed in the dashboard as well. But be careful not creating conflicts between DMX layers, if they try to control the same DMX channels.

Properties

The DMX layers share some properties with other layers, but they also have settings to configure how they send DMX data :

More info about DMX devices can be found in this article : Devices

They also defines a fixture :

• Fixture
   The color format of your LED (RGB, BGR, mono, …) and the bits (8 or 16).
   Note that you can create your own format of fixture, see next section.
   
• Resolution
   Indicate the number of LED for your fixture
   
• Assignation
   Depending how your LED are linked, you may to choose zigzag instead of straight.
   
• Flip
   Options to obviously reverse the order of the LED.
   
• Pixels
   The texture's size from which the LED colors will be compute.
   This is often useful to set an arbitrary size to match your content size.
   
• Curve
   To modulate how DMX data is affected by pixels brightness, see next section.

Please note that if you hide a DMX layer (with the eye-icon), it will be bypassed.
 And if you lock it (with the padlock-icon), it will still be rendered but not displayed in the workspace any more.

Custom Fixtures

Click the hamburger icon next to the fixture field to open the fixture editor :

This is useful if you are using LED with a special format, or if you want to control something else, such as a light.

Curves

The second tab of the popup allows you to create curves :

This is useful when your LED do not display the right color/brighness, because colorimetry of LED is not linear.