Hi, and welcome to this GrandMA 3 tutorial. This is episode 2, and it's about patching your first fixtures. In the last episode, we took a tour around the software; we looked at all the different fixed system views, and we looked at where these views are located on the real console.
We also looked at navigating the on-PC software with all the different system views, and we took a tour at the rear of the console with all the different connectors in the back. If you missed that episode, click here in the corner, and that will take you right to that episode. In this episode, we are patching fixtures into the desk for the first time to be able to make views later.
As you can see here in the presets pool, we can't make any presets right now, and that's because we have to patch some fixtures into the GrandMA 3 console first. The reason for this is that some of the views we need—position, color, beam, etc. —first become available when you have some fixtures in the patch, and the options will be different depending on what type of fixture you patch.
This is different from the GrandMA 2, where you were able to make all your views on a blank console with a new show loaded. Before we dive in, if you get any value out of these videos, please consider liking the video and subscribing to the channel, so you don't miss any new episodes in the future. If you have any questions along the way, please leave a comment below, and I'll answer them as well as I can.
So let's dive in. In order to start patching fixtures, we start by navigating to the small cog icon on the console. Here you'll find a lot of different options, and we will definitely visit this place in later tutorials because this is where a lot of different settings are controlled and manipulated.
Navigate to the patch and press it. This opens up the patch on the GrandMA 3 console. If you're used to GrandMA 2 consoles, we have to approach patching in a different way.
On the GrandMA 2 console, you would start by creating a line; inside that line, you would choose a fixture type and then patch it. The lines gave us a good overview of all our different fixture types, and it made it easy to find the fixtures you needed if you wanted to change something later. In the GrandMA 3 software, things have changed a little: these lines are gone, and now you can make a patch directly in one large pool.
You now have the option of grouping your fixtures, but you have to do it manually. Let's first patch some fixtures and then look at grouping. Let's go to "New Fixture" and click here on "Insert New Fixture.
" You can right-click on "New Fixture" or you can click on "Insert New Fixture"; both will open up this window. In this window, you will have multiple options. Option 1 is "In Current Show.
" This will show you what fixtures you're using in your show, but in this case, we haven't patched any fixtures yet, so it's going to be empty. Option 2 is "GrandMA 3. " This is for fixtures that have been developed directly for the GrandMA 3 console.
There's a surprisingly small number of fixtures in this pool, and I would expect this to grow a lot over the next few years. Option 3 is "GrandMA 2. " This, as the name implies, is the fixture library from the GrandMA 2 console.
It's a massive library that contains a lot of fixture types, and the cool thing is that they can be patched directly on the GrandMA 3 console. So, if you can't find the fixture you need in any of the other pools, my guess is that you can find it right here. Option 4 is the GDTF library.
GDTF stands for General Device Type Format. GDTF is supported by some of the larger manufacturers—MA Lighting, Vectorworks, and Robe—they created this project. The general idea is that instead of all the different manufacturers in the industry having to develop their own fixture profiles all the time, GDTF is supposed to be a standard where everybody can make a fixture profile that you can use across many different platforms.
This means instead of having Vectorworks, MA Lighting, or Cast Software develop a new fixture type profile for their software, the manufacturer—ROBE, MARTIN, Clay Paky, or anyone else—can make a fixture profile for their brand new fixture, and then it can be implemented across different pieces of hardware and software. So hopefully, when this really kicks off, there will be no more waiting for new fixtures, no matter if you need them for your 3D visualization software or your lighting console. I think GDTF is a great idea, and I really hope that all manufacturers will start using it soon; this would make all our lives a lot easier in the future.
I left a link to the GDTF website in the description below; here you can read much more about GDTF and the thoughts behind it. Next on the list is option 5, the User tab. "User," as the name indicates, is where your own fixture profiles are stored in the console.
If you make your own fixture profile, sometimes it can be a little hard to find it again later on the GrandMA 2 console, but on the GrandMA 3, it's stored right here directly in the user directory. Last but not least is option 6, the Shares tab. "Shares" works if your console or on-PC software is connected to the internet.
Shares will allow you to search directly in a large online database, and here you can import the fixture you need directly into your show. This is a cool feature, and this will make your life as a programmer a lot easier. Instead of having to go to a computer to find the fixture you need and then saving it to a USB drive for import, you can do it directly on the console itself.
Fixture you need for your show: you can use the different options here in the "Insert New Fixture" window. In the show we are starting up right now, we need four different fixture types. We need twelve pieces of Martin Mac Viper Profile in the 16-bit version.
We need twelve pieces of Martin Mac Aura XB in standard mode. We need six pieces of Martin Atomic LED in the extended mode. And last but not least, we need twelve dimmer channels for some 2-light blinders.
You can always add more fixtures later in the patch, but this will just get us started. We will start in the GrandMA 2 library this time for finding the fixture types for this show, so navigate to the GrandMA 2 tab and search for Martin Mac Viper Profile. Click on the small arrow icon and highlight Martin Mac Viper Profile 16-bit, then press the select button at the bottom of the window.
A new window appears with four different lines. You need to look at the first line, which is what the console calls your fixture after you have patched them. You can leave this line with whatever the console suggests, but I like to name it something that I can remember, so just type "Viper1" in the field.
If you interline with a number, the GrandMA 3 console will automatically increase it by +1 for each fixture. That will help you when you look for the fixtures later in the fixture window or in the 3D visualizer. The next line, "Quantity," will tell the console how many Martin Mac Viper Profiles you want to patch in your show.
In this case, we type twelve units. The next line is the fixture ID for the Martin Mac Viper Profile units. If you have never worked with a lighting console before, this might seem a little confusing, but what we do here is tell the console where you can call these fixtures when you have patched them.
It's best practice to have unique numbers for every fixture in your patch because it's very easy to call unit 712 or unit 602 directly when you need it. For some reason, I like my profile fixtures to be named something with 700, so I will type 701 in this field. This will now number all the Mac Viper fixtures 701 and forward.
In this case, we are patching twelve fixtures, so my fixtures will be 701 through 712. The last line of this window is the patch itself, and it will tell the console on what DMX universe and channel you want to start the first of the twelve fixtures. In this case, we start at Universe 1, DMX Channel 1.
The GrandMA 3 console now starts with the first address you told it to and then automatically calculates the last addresses based on how many channels each fixture uses. If you remember the last video where we looked at the connections on the back of the console, you might remember we had outputs A, B, C, D, E, and F. If you patch something on DMX Universe 1, this is the same DMX universe as letter A on the back.
This can easily be changed, but that's for a later tutorial. In this case, we keep the universe and channel at 1. 1, which means DMX Universe 1, DMX Channel 1.
Press apply, and you now have prepared your first twelve fixtures. I say "prepared" because we haven't patched anything yet. The patch is not active until you leave the patch window and save your changes.
We will look at that when we have patched all the fixtures we need for the show. To patch the rest of the fixtures we need for this show, repeat the process for your Martin Mac Aura XB 16-bit fixtures. Search for Aura XB, expand the Auras on the little arrow here, navigate to the standard RGB, and press select.
This time we name the units "Aura XB 1. " In the first line, we set the quantity to twelve units, and we give it a fixture ID of 601. This time we want the fixtures to be patched to DMX Universe 2 with a start address of 1; we type 2.
1 and press apply. Next up is the six Martin Atomic fixtures. Navigate to New Fixture and search in the GrandMA 2 library for Atomic LED.
Locate the Atomic 3000 LED extended version and press select. Name it "Atomic 1," set a quantity of six, and set the fixture ID to 301. This time we will try to select the address in a different way.
Most of the time, you'll be looking at a piece of paper with a patch on it when you are patching your fixtures, but sometimes you don't have a patch sheet. This could be because it's a small show, and you just need to have new fixtures working fast. GrandMA 3 gives you a great overview of what addresses are available in the patch and which DMX addresses you've already used on other fixtures.
So instead of just typing the universe and address, this time we look at the graphic overview. If you click on the address cell where it says 1. 303, when you do that, you are presented with two options: the calculator and the sheet view.
If you click on the sheet tab, you can see a graphical overview of your DMX universes and the addresses that are already occupied by some of the fixtures we patched earlier in our show. Right now, it's showing us Universe 1, but if you want to select another DMX universe, you can click on the universe button up here in the right corner of the sheet view. You can simply type the universe you want to look at; in this case, we type 2, and the console will show us Universe 2.
Now you can scroll down in the sheet until you find an empty address you like. It doesn't matter which address you choose; it all depends on what you want to do in your show. In this case, it's 169; that is the first free DMX address.
Click on it, and the view will jump back to the first window with your choice of DMX Universe 2, DMX address. 169. Press apply to lock down your selection.
Lastly, we'll patch 12 dimmer channels we need for our 12 pieces of two-light blinders. Right-click on new fixture, choose the GrandMA 2 library, search for generic dimmer, expand the dimmer line, click on dimmer, and click select. Name it dim 1, set the quantity to 12, type the fixture ID 101, and set the patch to 3.
1. Congratulations! You have now patched all the fixtures we need for this small demo show.
You can now see the entire list of fixtures in your patch if you scroll up and down in this list, but we have no grouping in order for this patch, and that can make it a little overwhelming if we have to change something later. This is where GrandMA 3 is a little different than GrandMA 2. We have to manually add the group we want in our show.
Luckily, it's quite easy. Once again, navigate to insert new fixture, click on the GrandMA 3 tab, search for group, and select the only option that shows up here. Forget about the group name; we'll change that in a minute.
Set the quantity to 4 and forget the fixture ID; we'll also change that in a minute. Click on the apply button. You now have four new empty lines in your patch window with wrong numbers and wrong names.
Let's change that quickly. If you look at the way we named and numbered our fixtures, we have MAC Viper 701 through 712, MAC Aura XP 601 through 612, Martin Atomics 301 through 312, and generic dimmer 101 through 112. We named the four new groups like this: the first group is group 600, and we name it Aura Group; the second group is 700, and we name it Viper Group; the third group is group 300, and we name it Atomic Group; the last one is group 100, and we name it Dimmer Group.
The group number will give you quick access to the corresponding group by just inputting the number for the group. The group numbers make it faster to select a group in the future when we need it, although I'm not sure how much we're going to use it, actually, because we'll make all our groups another way in the next tutorial. But let's do this new way just to make sure we did it right.
We now have named the four groups as we like it, but we still haven't moved any of the corresponding fixtures into the right groups, and we'll do that right now. Mark all the Martin MAC Aura XB fixtures with your mouse or your finger on the screen like this. Find the cut button below in the patch window and click on it.
Navigate to your new Aura Group and click the little arrow icon. Click on new fixture and click paste. Side note: You can click on the small paste button, but you can also use your keyboard (Control + V); both work the same way.
Do the same for the other fixtures. Now all your patching is done, and we have separated it into groups for a better overview of your patch sheet. The only thing that is left to do now is to close the patch window.
You do that up here in the right corner, and you'll be prompted with three options: option two, let's just start there—discard and exit if you think you made a mistake and you don't want to save your changes; option three, stay in patch—go back to the patch to make more changes; option one, save and exit—in this case, we're confident that we did a good job and we'll just click save and exit. Congratulations! You have now patched your first show on the GrandMA 3 console.
We are now ready to start building our first views and navigating around the console for real. If you get any value out of this video, please remember to like the video and subscribe to the channel; that would help us a lot. I would like to hear from you in the comment section if you have worked with GrandMA consoles before, or maybe you are a WholeHOG user or Chamsys user and you're just looking to learn GrandMA consoles for the first time.
If you have any questions of any kind, or maybe you'd like to suggest other topics we should cover in this series, you are more than welcome to leave a comment below as well. Next time, we'll start building the views we need to start programming our show for real. See you next time!
