I am blessed in that I am busy all the time. It’s also a curse as it cuts down on time at home and the amount of preproduction I can do on-site. So I depend on visualizers to get a jump start on my lighting programming for most of my shows.
A visualizer is a computer software program that allows you to draw up a mock lighting rig over a stage set, connect a lighting console (real or virtual) to the computer and start turning on the lights. I can cue up my lighting for business conferences or rock shows in a couple of days, all from the comfort of my living room.
In 1995, Gil Densham, Robert Bell, and Rick Szisarto got together with the original Flying Pig founders to develop the first visualizer and called it WYSIWYG, an acronym for “What You See Is What You Get.” [FPS later gave up the product rights – Ed.] It used a card that could mount in a tower computer. You added software, hooked up DMX to the computer and voila, you could program lights. Well almost. You had to hang a generic fixture on a pipe and a wire frame light beam was emitted from the fixture. You could change the color of these lines, move them, and focus all the lights to imaginary points on stage. Now after 10 years, the word “wysiwyg” is a verb as well as a noun. No matter what visualizer program a person uses, they say, “we’re gonna wysiwyg the project.”
Nowadays there are several programs that do similar things. Some are better than others. Some need super computers, others run fine on a simple laptop. Some are expensive, some reasonable. The main programs I have used are Vision ESP, Martin Show Designer (MSD), WYSIWYG (WYG), LD Assistant (LDA) and the grandMA visualizer (GMA). Each one is good, but some are better than others, depending on your needs. Some are superior at making beautiful renderings and some are better for actually programming a light show. Some are cost efficient, some a waste of my money. I will point out why I prefer some programs. This is strictly subjective, as I am only offering an opinion of what works for me.
Fixture Libraries
Fixture profiles in the software library are very important. Some companies, like LDA, allow you to build your own fixture profiles. You can do it, but they are not perfect. ESP and MSD offer amazing support. If I e-mail them and ask for a new fixture profile, they will create it and e-mail it to me within 24 hours. WYG prefers to take actual measurements of real fixtures in their lab and then build the profile. Therefore, they often do not have libraries for fixtures that have been on the market for months. GMA offers a website where you can find fixtures that other users have already built. Last year I sent an e-mail to them asking for a new fixture and three different people emailed a fixture profile to me the next day.
Moving Lights in Real-Time
Most of these programs can run 20-30 movers in real-time or pretty close. After that, the program gets sluggish. ESP is bad with big projects that have lots of lights. If I have 50 movers and any decent-sized set, the lights will move at about six frames per second; the lights will be jerky and don’t look like they should. And this is on super computer with the fastest gaming cards made today. I put 100 moving lights on MSD and they all move at 30 frames per second flawlessly – on my MacBook Pro laptop no less. WYG and GMA are pretty good at moving large numbers of lights in reasonable time.
Renderings
Renderings allow you to build a scene and export it as a JPEG or bitmap. Some of these programs produce photo-realistic pictures while some look like cartoons. The light beams reproduced in ESP blow away all other visualizers. MSD has new beams that are okay. GMA is looking better. LDA seems to be the only one that reproduces front light correctly. In other words, if a light is focused toward you, your eye will notice the beam coming out of the fixture as well as the target that is lit. If the light is focused away from you, your eye will only notice the lit object and not the beam. The other companies have not mastered this yet. So unwanted beams from front lights will obscure your vision and lessen the quality of your renderings.
Importing
ESP is the only software that can import a Vectorworks drawing with patched fixtures. You should use their VW symbols, though. You can import your VW set drawings, but they must be low-resolution or you are wasting your time. LDA can import an AutoCAD drawing (DWG) in a similar fashion. I cannot vouch for how good their program runs with high res sets or blocks. [LDA is an Autodesk licensed program with an AutoCAD engine, so importing DWG and DXF is a breeze. – Ed.] For years I tried to import DWG files into WYG, but it failed. MSD is the best at this. I constantly build custom truss and curved set pieces and import these into their program. For some reason it just works and has little effect on the movement of the lights.
Video Feeds
All of the programs listed here, except for LDA, allow you to run video feeds straight into the computer at the same time as you are playing back light cues. You can map the pixels right onto a surface such as a 15 foot x 20 foot projection screen. ESP even allows you to use Element Labs Versatubes and correctly map your video feed to them in any configuration of tubes.
Paperwork
Most of these software packages come with the ability to print out your patch. Some can figure out your cable circuiting. MSD and ESP offer their paperwork as part of the program. WYG requires a separate program you can buy if you wish to work with paperwork. [LDA produces a variety of spreadsheets with all the attributes of the lights and allows you to export it to a delimited file for massaging. – Ed.]
You may wonder which program I actually use. All of my renderings are made in ESP by importing Vectorworks and Cinema 4d drawings, while I rely solely on MSD for all of my real-time video and lighting programming.
Email Nook at nschoenfeld@plsn.com.
