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SCENES CUES AND
GUIDE SCENES
SCENES AND CUES AND
CUES GUIDE GUIDE
The Scenes and Cues features is a flexible, convenient and productive way to store and restore the status of surfaces, fixtures, media or any parameters.
This guide will show you the differences between Scenes and Cues, how to create them and how to set them up.
Introduction
MadMapper can be used in very different ways to handle the various situations of visual artists &
technicians: installations, live performance, or sequenced shows (dance, theatre…).
Scenes and Cues is a feature aimed to help these workflows.
Principles: surfaces & medias are objects with a set of parameters and each of those can be stored in cues with the granularity you need as well as editing facilities.
You might want to control independently different projectors, or have different cues for your video outputs and for your lights/leds etc. So you would for instance create cues on row 1 for the stage projector, on row 2 cues for the side projectors and on row 3 for LEDs.
Or you might want to have control on the medias and colors separately: having a set of cues on row 1 to change medias and another set of cues on row 2 with surfaces colors.
Cues can store everything that can be controlled with MadMapper “Controls” (MIDI/OSC/DMX etc.), besides other parameters (complete geometry etc.).
Also cues allow transitioning smoothly from a state to another, fading all parameters with specified transition (including media fading, geometry etc.).
To make things easy for the most common case, MadMapper also proposes Scenes.
Scenes are located on the first row of the cue bank grid. When you create a Scene, it stores everything (surfaces, fixtures & medias) and starting it will hide any surface you added after creating the Scene. To clarify:
A Scene is like a Cue but with limited edition: you cannot remove entries from a Scene, and you cannot store only part of an object in a Scene.
A Scene will hide any surface/fixture that is not stored in it (because they were created after you created your Scene).
The idea is that when you start a Scene, you will see the exact same thing as when you stored it (on all video outputs and DMX output).
Scenes are made to handle in an easy way the most common cases, while Cues allow finer control of you show. Using one or the other, or combining both, depends on your scenario.
MadMapper also offers an easy way to automate **scenes/**cues (ie “loop through my cues each 1 minute”) with the Auto-Play.
The Cue Scheduler module can be instantiated for more precise Automation / Scheduling (ie “start this cue on January 1st at 0am”, “start this cue each Thursday at 9am”, “loop through cues on row 1 on Monday, on row 2 on Tuesday”…) be moved into the Trash folder and automati- cally deleted after 7 days of inactivity.
And finally the Calendar Scheduler module will let you start cues based on a calendar you ex- ported from a calendar application (google calendar, iCalendar, Outlook…) It handles
recurrence, GMT time etc.
Presentation
In MadMapper 4 Scenes and Cues are integrated in the tools panel, below your Input and Pre- view Output views.
You can now extract and move these panels to an external screen with the undock current panel button next to the panel name.
There’s also an option to keep the extracted panels on top of other windows (the little chain button on the right in your extracted panel).
In the very Scenes and Cues panel, you will be by default on Cue Bank-1.
In the Cue Banks list, next to the Edit and Live buttons, you can create a new Cue Bank (actually as many as you want) or remove one.
Switch at any time from a Cue Bank to another by using the Cue Bank list (or using a Control - MIDI, OSC, DMX…)
The Cue Bank view consists of a top toolbar and a grid of cells. By default the grid size is 16x8 cells, it will automatically grow when you store anything in the last column/row. On top of the cell grid, there are column buttons indicating the number of the column and allowing to trig- ger the scene or all the cues in this column (if there is no scene) in a single click (or using MIDI, OSC, DMX etc.). Note that the first row is dedicated to Scenes.
Creating & Editing Cues
In the cue bank toolbar, from left to right, you’ll find:
A button to expand / collapse the cue bank view
The “Edit” button to enter “Edit Cues” mode (more explanations below) A button to trigger next cue grid column
A button to enable “Auto Play” mode
A button to setup “Auto Play” mode settings (interval, loop/random mode etc.) Three buttons to choose the size of the cells in the view
The Inspector button to edit the cue parameter more precisely (setting a different transition duration/type per attribute).
Creating a new Scene
When the mouse is over a Scene cell (very first grid row), a «+» button will appear.
By simply pressing the «+» button, you’ll then create a new scene, named Scene-1.
Creating a new Cue
There are different options to create a cue:
The simplest one is to drag & drop a selection of surfaces or a media into a cue slot.
All parameters of drag & dropped objects will be added to the cue.
It will automatically create a new cue if the slot was empty.
You can enter the “Edit Cues” mode that will be explained below.
The last option is to right click the cue and in the popup menu choose “Add To Cue” and select the kind of objects to add (All Objects / All Surfaces / All Fixtures / All Medias / All Active Medias…).
For both Scenes and Cues, you can insert multiple columns/row at once (the Excel way, i.e. select 3 columns and choose Add Column before/after and it will insert 3 columns before or after).
You can delete a Cue grid the same way.
Editing a Scene or a Cue
You can inspect & modify a scene or cue by pressing the “Inspector” button.
Parameters values can be changed from the inspector.
By default all parameters use the cue transition settings. But you can specify “local transition settings” for each parameters individually. For instance you want to fade the opacity but not the RGB levels.
You can also select multiple cues to edit their content (remove parameters, change value, change transition settings etc).
For instance if I have 10 cues containing Quad 1 and I want to update “Output Geometry” from all of them, I can select all 10 cues, choose the “Surfaces / Quad 1 / Output Geometry” entry and press “Update from current values”.
To rename a scene/cue, just double click on its name.
To change the fade time, double click the “Fade: xxx” label in the cue cell.
To change transition type, color/image/media thumbnail or comment, click the cell setup button.
If I want to stop fading on color levels of Quad 1, I can select all 10 cues, select Red, Green and Blue in the editor, and in the inspector I choose “No Transition”.
When cueing a visual, some parameters are not stored by default, but can be added manually.
Generally you don’t want the current position in a movie to be stored in a cue, while that might be useful in some cases. Same for visual “Restart”, you can choose wether starting a cue will or will not restart the visuals. Keep in mind that Restart media is set to ON by defaut (use cue inspector to deactivate).
To add those settings, enter Edit mode (see below), and click the “restart” button (rewind icon for movies) or the movie playback position widget.
To duplicate a cue, just drag & drop it to another grid slot with Alt key pressed. You can also do Cmd+C / Ctrl+C, select another cell and press Cmd+V / Ctrl+V.
You can move one or a multi-selection of cues by drag&drop. To insert/delete a column/row, use right- click popup menu “Layout” submenu.
For Scenes: in the popup menu, “Update Scene” will update the scene from the current project state.
For Cues: in the popup menu, “Update Values” entry will update all parameters already stored in this cue with their current value (not adding any parameter).
Edit Mode
If you press the “Edit” button (or Cmd+Shift+C), MadMapper will show a red overlay on all cuable parameters.
Parameters that are stored in at least one of the cue selection (multiple ones may be selected) also have a red or orange outline. Orange outline means that this parameter value is different than the one stored in the cue(s), or is not present in all selected cue(s).
Surfaces and medias also have a red outline when at least one of their parameters in stored in the cue selection.
For instance in this screenshot, the cue being selected, “Cue-1”, contains the parameters Opa- city, Red, Green & Blue of surface “Quad 1”, but not the other parameters. The opacity is orange, which means that its value in the cue is different than current parameter value.
Pressing one of the widget will add, remove or update this parameter in selected cues.
In Edit Cues mode:
Widgets have a special behavior: clicking the widget will add, remove or update the parame- ter to the selected cues. To change the parameter, keep the SHIFT key pressed while clicking / editing.
A “CUE ALL” button appears on surface items (in the list) and on visuals. Pressing it will do like if you drag & drop the surface/media onto the selected cues: it adds to the selection all parame- ters of those objects (or update their values if they are already stored in the cues).
Clicking a surface in the input preview will first select it (normal behavior), but if you click a surface that is already selected, it will cue/uncue “Input Geometry” (surface uvs). Same for output preview & “Output Geometry” parameter.
Changing a parameter will automatically add/update it in the selected cues. For instance if I change the Red color level of a surface, all selected cues will have this parameter updated.
Same if you change a surface geometry.
Pressing Backspace or Suppr will remove this parameter from selected Cues, this is not possible for Scenes.
Starting Scenes and Cues
Starting Cues
Scenes & Cues can be start by clicking the “play” button on it, or by clicking a cue grid column button.
You can also use the “Next Column” button to trigger all cues in the next column, or the “Auto Play” mode for automation.
MadMapper 4 also bring a Live mode : pressing a cell will trigger the cue, with no editing possi- bilities, just live triggers (which is great with touch screens).
The last option is to use the Cue Scheduler or the Calendar Scheduler modules that will be pre- sented later.
There are also a lot of “Controls” to trigger cues. When entering “Edit MIDI Controls” mode (or Keyboard, DMX, OSC etc.) you can assign a MIDI channel to trigger a cue cell (ie column 1, row 1):
In Edit Controls mode, new buttons appear below the cues toolbar. By default “Map to Cell Po- sition” is activated, which means that the assignment will be on a grid cell position (ie “/cues/
bank_1/cues/by_cell/col_1/row_1”). If you activate “Map To Cue”, the control will be assignment to the target Cue (ie “/cues/bank_1/cues/by_name/INTRO 1”), so if you move the cue in the grid, the assignment will still trigger this cue.
You can also assign a control to trigger a column (by clicking a column button over the grid), it will start all cues in this column (from bottom to up).
For more options you can check in the “Controls List” dialog, by pressing the + button on the left.
What starting a Scene or Cue exactly does?
When a Cue is started it will send all parameter values stored in the cue to the document, if a fade time is set, it will start a transition for this parameter (from its current value to the value stored in the cue).
If any other cue had a running transition for this parameter it will be discarded.
When a transition is ongoing, you can see the transition progression on the cue that generated this transition.
If a cue contains various transition settings for the different parameters, the progress indication will reflect the longest transition that was generated by this cue.
If you use a “damper” transition, the progress will not show anything relevant, except that a transition generated by this cue is ongoing.
When starting a Scene, the same happens, but any surface/fixture not stored in the Scene will be hidden using cue transition duration setting (ie if you create a scene and create new surfaces after).
Cue Scheduler
Schedules your cues/columns with the Cue Scheduler Module:
Choose a specific day and time or a recurring date. Use automation and set up rules. Define precisely which cue(s) or column(s) of which bank will play.
Combine scheduling and automation for even more control.
More information about the Cue Scheduler Module in the tutorial video available on our Youtube channel as well as in the In Depth guide.
Calendar Scheduler
Trigger Scenes and Cues at specific dates and times from any calendar application with the Ca- lendar Scheduler Module.
Create multiple instances with this safe process (no internet connection is required).
This module uses a standard ICS file : once your project is finalized, create events correspon- ding to each scenes and cues you need to trigger at a specific date and time in your calendar application, then export this calendar in ICS format, and finally import this file into MadMapper.
More information about the Calendar Scheduler Module in its In Depth Guide.
