Scene objects

Stage, walls, furniture and people in the 3D scene.

Everything in the 3D scene that is not a light: the set, the walls, the furniture and the people. Objects catch light, cast shadows and give the beams something to land on, so a rig with a few objects in it previews far more honestly than a rig hanging in a void.

Open with VISUALISER OBJECTS, or from the layout editor.

The table

One row per object, edited in place. + Add Object, Delete and Clone sit under it.

Column	Meaning
Name	Yours to choose
Type	See the list below
X / Y / Z	The centre of the object, in metres
Width / Height / Depth	Its size, in metres
Yaw / Pitch / Roll	Its rotation, in degrees
Colour	Base surface colour
Shine	0 = matte, 1 = mirror-like. How much the surface reflects light back toward the camera
Diffuse	How wide the shine reflection spreads - 1 is widest, lower is a tighter highlight
Texture File	A BMP from `assets/textures/`, applied across each face
Tile Mode	Stretched fits the image to the face; Tiled repeats it at a fixed real-world size
Zoom	Stretched: magnification about the face centre (>1 zooms in). Tiled: the tile size in metres

Numeric cells scrub: drag on them rather than retyping.

Object types

Shapes - cuboid, cylinder, sphere

Set and staging - truss, curtain, seat, mirror_ball

Letters - letter_l, letter_m, letter_x

People - ten figures (person_male_1…4, person_female_1…4, person_neutral_1, person_neutral_2). Put a couple on stage and the beam angles stop being abstract.

The mirror ball

A mirror_ball is the one object that gives light back. It is a sphere, so it takes one dimension - Width is its diameter, and Height and Depth are not read. It turns by itself at two revolutions a minute, the speed a hung ball is driven at; Yaw is the angle it starts from, so two balls in one rig need not turn in step, and Pitch and Roll tilt the axis it hangs on.

Point a beam at it and every mirror tile that beam is actually on throws a thin pencil of its own, in the ball’s own colour and at its own brightness. That follows from where the light really is, so it behaves the way the real thing does:

A tight beam lights a handful of tiles and you get a handful of rays. Open the zoom out over the whole ball and every tile facing the lantern reflects, which is the room full of dots.
The iris counts as well as the zoom. Stopping down makes the beam narrower, so fewer tiles are on it and fewer rays come back.
Two lanterns of different colours do not mix. Each tile reflects whatever is on it, so the two sets of dots cross without blending.
A gobo is not carried through. Colour and brightness come back off a mirror; a pattern imaged on a surface does not.

Give it a high Shine and a low Diffuse and the ball itself glitters where the beam lands, which is the other half of the look.

Why objects matter to the picture

Shadows need something to cast onto. With no objects, a shadow-casting rig looks the same as a non-shadow-casting one.
Lit surfaces are where a beam’s colour actually reads. A beam in haze with nothing to hit is only half the look.
Scale - a person or a seat block tells you instantly whether the zoom is right.

Objects and the layout editor

Objects appear in the 2D stage layout alongside trusses, fixtures and targets, and can be dragged there. The table is for precision; the plan view is for arranging.

Saving

Objects are part of the showfile. File → Export → Objects… writes just the objects (and the stage), which is how you carry a set design between shows:

SAVE OBJECTS venue-set.lmx