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pathway cognito2 Manual

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Natural Language Control
This essay explains the core technology used in Cognito's internal 'fade engine'
that makes DMX512 and runs the lights and the end devices at the bits and bytes
level. Reading this and understanding Natural Language Control is not necessary
to operate the console, but it will give you an appreciation of how lighting control
has advanced over the years. Using today's advanced lighting systems has never
been easier because of Natural Language Control.
 
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IGHTS   W ITH  
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Much of this document was originally published in 2005 by Horizon Control in a white paper
called The Abstract Control Model. Horizon was purchased by Acuity Brands Lighting in 2011 and
the entire team joined Pathway Connectivity when it too was acquired by Acuity.
as used in
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© 2015
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  • Page 1: Table Of Contents

    Much of this document was originally published in 2005 by Horizon Control in a white paper called The Abstract Control Model. Horizon was purchased by Acuity Brands Lighting in 2011 and the entire team joined Pathway Connectivity when it too was acquired by Acuity.

  • Page 2: Background

    Background Communication and the expression of ideas is central to the art of lighting. Creating great lighting is a team effort lead by the designer. The language a designer uses to communicate with the team, and specifically the console programmer, is crucial to the process of creating the art. The programmer, in turn, must then train the console in order to orchestrate the lights to ultimately relay the intent of the designer to the audience.
  • Page 3 Natural Language Control as used in Cognito Computer control first appeared on Broadway in 1975 when Tharon Musser used the Electronics Diversified LS-8 console on A Chorus Line. This new technology allowed for unprecedented repeatability and a huge number of cues executed in record time.

  • Page 4: Bytes

    event that occurred in the industry with the introduction of Light Palette. The problem was compounded by that fact that industry leaders were extremely protective of their intellectual property. There was no sharing of control protocols between lights and controllers. Each manufacturer vigorously protected the methods they used to control their fixtures and automated systems were sole- source.
  • Page 5 Natural Language Control as used in Cognito 2. The numbers and 'words' you use to build cues will actually mean something. You will have an idea of what you can do with the lights and what is on stage by reading the display.

  • Page 6: Example

    Pan and Tilt Example The Home position for pan and tilt on most DMX lights is 50:50 (or 32767:32767). This positions the light such that you will have maximum movement in each direction before encountering a pan-stop or tilt-stop. For a light that has a total pan range of 360 degrees, with the control channel set to half, you are sitting at 180 degrees.
  • Page 7 Natural Language Control as used in Cognito The angles of pan are completely different. The beams of light are not even close to parallel. You can see how this can be very frustrating if you have a mixed rig. With Natural Language Control, the Pan attribute is represented in real-world units of degrees.
  • Page 8 producing new and exciting methods of transition during the fade from cue to cue. Various attributes, such as position and color lend themselves very nicely to working in different ways. Color Space is described in detail below, but let's examine how we can move from one place to another on stage given two stored end places.
  • Page 9 Natural Language Control as used in Cognito moving in an organic manner or looking like they are operated by a follow-spot operator. People are quick to forgive the fact that they are always moving in this arc pattern. Natural Language Control gives you the option of how the light will move.

  • Page 10: Oom Example

    Zoom Example Programming lights using real-world values allows you to swap one fixture for another and get predictable results. Far more useful is the fact that the same values are used to control different types of lights in a similar fashion. Looking at the zoom attribute demonstrates this again.

  • Page 11: Shutter Control Example

    Natural Language Control as used in Cognito The light on the left would complete the cue zooming all the way to 70°: To be fair, Cue 2 could not have been written using the light on the right. This cue must have been recorded using a light that can achieve 70°.
  • Page 12 The oval in the image above shows how the light would fall on stage if the fixture was hung in a typical Front of House position. You can imagine that trying to make shutter cuts can be a time consuming effort of hunting and pecking for the right channel or more likely, pair of channels.
  • Page 13 Natural Language Control as used in Cognito (red and green) and the respective angle controls above those. One wheel manipulates motors 1a and 1b in unison to Thrust the shutter into the aperture of the fixture. The yellow wheel above that adjusts the relationship between those two motors, giving you one handle for controlling the Angle of that shutter.

  • Page 14: Obo Control

    shutters 47% of the way into the beam. By using a percentage unit to describe the position in the aperture and degree units to describe the angle, you can copy the shape of a shutter cut from one type of moving light with one set of physical constraints to another with predictable results.
  • Page 15 Natural Language Control as used in Cognito Different manufacturers use a variety of control channels to achieve all of these possible behaviors. Some use lots of channels which surprisingly makes the control of the gobo wheel easier, and other insist on bunching up behaviors on only a couple of channels.
  • Page 16 Remember, the fader doesn't show you these options as selections - you need to know them in advance! In contrast, Cognito's display shows Gobo 1 Wheel Mode (yellow wheel), Gobo Select (red wheel), Gobo Mode (blue wheel) and Gobo Index (green wheel). And, as well as showing "Dots" as the current selection, you can see that moving one 'tick' forward would give you "Pinwheel"...
  • Page 17 Natural Language Control as used in Cognito The same information is shown on Cognito's display like this: Changing the direction of the rotation on a DMX based system means you must travel the second handle through a bunch of values that are of no interest to you. The gobo would slow down, then stop, then change direction and speed up again as you adjust the control channel.

  • Page 18: Conditional Abstract Attributes

    Again, this is how it looks on Cognito's display when programming: Conditional Abstract Attributes Automated lights are riddled with control parameters. In earlier days, many fixture manufacturers combined DMX512 channels to achieve separate effects in an attempt to prevent the fixture from consuming an outrageous number of channels.
  • Page 19 Natural Language Control as used in Cognito Wheels tool, which is common to all attribute families, labels each control appropriately as to what it is doing at present based on the state of other attributes. Complex gobo wheels are a good example of how this is put to use. DMX512 mapping and the number of DMX512 slots used by the light have nothing to do with how the controls are laid out to the user.
  • Page 20 Shown on the red wheel is Gobo 1 Wheel Speed which has been set to 10 RPM, and green wheel has Gobo 1 Mode set to Index preventing the individual gobos rotating. This is where Natural Language Control keeps you out of trouble by only showing you what's possible.

  • Page 21: Attribute Substitutions

    Natural Language Control as used in Cognito Cognito does keep the fact that you were rotating the gobos at 5 RPM, but if you set the Mode (blue wheel) to Index and Cognito will remember that Index was last set to 45° and you're back where you began: Attribute Substitutions Copying and swapping attributes among lights that share scalar properties like Position and Zoom is only the tip of the iceberg when using Natural Language...
  • Page 22 with any combination of these three and make intelligent substitutions between them if required. The proliferation of LED lighting has made common the RGB color space of additive color mixing. With the three primary colors you can mix them to make white or each at various levels to make colors.
  • Page 23 Natural Language Control as used in Cognito By the way, the color value is not stored as Slot 5, it is stored as "Yellow" so that if it's ever applied to a different light with a different wheel (or mixing system), it would produce the correct or near correct color again.

  • Page 24: Phantom Abstract Attributes

    Phantom Abstract Attributes Natural Language Control's ability to provide additional attribute controls the fixture manufacturer didn't allow for makes controlling some types of lights more convenient. An ideal example of this is RGB LED fixtures. Traditionally, the only controls the users can adjust are Red, Green and Blue. Distinctly absent is an Intensity attribute.
  • Page 25 Natural Language Control as used in Cognito Attribute, Natural Language Control can automatically 'tune' your white or Correlated Color Temperature (CCT) when you're not mixing rich colors. Ignoring brightness for now, there are two parameters that define the color. Saturation is the amount of color or perhaps the distance from white, and Hue is the dominant wavelength of the light defining its color.
  • Page 26 Equally you could run the cues again with the CCT set to 3200K and it might look like this: Another option offered by Natural Language Control is the ability to automatically lower the CCT when you dim the lights. This is called Dim-To-Warm. When tungsten lights are dimmed, they cool off (which makes the light 'warmer' or more red).

  • Page 27: Color Spaces

    Natural Language Control as used in Cognito Color Spaces Complimentary Color Spaces are basically different methods used to describe the individual components that make up what the eye perceives as color. None of them are right or wrong. They are individual and each one has its purpose. The selection of one over the other is primarily a matter of choice.
  • Page 28 When you start with white light and introduce CMY flags, midway between Cue 1 and Cue 2, most of the dichroic glass is in the lens tube sucking most of the color (and intensity) out of the light and you 'dip' toward mud. Regardless of what color system your fixtures use, if you fade in the HSV color space from, say, purple to green where the saturation is pretty much unchanged, the only attribute that moves is Hue.
  • Page 29 Natural Language Control as used in Cognito This sort of fade avoids white and mud and looks more natural on stage. Note that the Natural Language Control decides to fade clockwise around this color space. That is because going through blue seems natural when going from purple to green.

  • Page 30: Conclusion

    Conclusion For years the language and control structure used to control lighting systems has been imposed upon designers by the equipment manufacturers. This was not conducive to an enjoyable experience for anyone involved in the process. Natural Language Control defines a common language that designers and programmers can share and the complex processes of translating this language into DMX or any other control protocol is taken care of for you.

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