DMX Lighting

[alexanderson1993]

This proposal won't be implemented for a long time, but I just wanted to get it out there before I forget.

Thorium Classic's DMX lighting setup was good, but certainly limited in its capabilities, especially around animation. The hope is that we could change that with Thorium Nova.

First, some abstractions:

DMX Device: A definition of a device which can accept DMX signals. This consists of a name and a list of the DMX channels the device supports.

{
  name: "Generic RGB",
  channels: ["red","green","blue"]
}
{
  name: "Smoke Machine",
  channels: ["intensity"]
}

DMX Fixture: A definition of an actual fixture in the physical set. Fixtures are assigned a name, a DMX device that corresponds to the physical device used in the fixture, a starting channel number (which is also configured on the physical DMX device), and a DMX Graph.

DMX Graph: This is where things differ from Thorium Classic. Instead of using confusing configuration options, the DMX light's state (the intensity of each channel) is defined as a function of the current state of the simulation and a ever-increasing frame count (at 44FPS, which is the DMX frame rate).

That function will be defined using a node graph editor, probably built around https://flume.dev. The output node will be a DMX device, where each of the inputs are the channels on the device. Using color functions, mathematical functions, like sine, and random number generators, it should be possible to create any kind of animation.

I actually built something like this before, but the implementation was poor and it never took off. I think with the tools and understanding that we have now, it should be easier to create a powerful DMX animation system.