Software: Nutcracker

xLights with Nutcracker

A Little History

xLights was written in 2010 by Matt Brown to create a stable scheduler for his Vixen sequences. LSP, LOR and Vixen users have used xLights to be able to get a full featured, stable scheduler. The scheduler has very little lag and can handle shows with 10's of thousands of channels.

Here is how xLights works today:

a) Setup the hardware you will be using. USB, E1.31 and other hardware are all supported
b) Convert your existing sequences into xLights. The CONVERT tab can read LOR lms or Vixen vix files and create a new xseq xLights file.
c) Use the scheduler to play the xseq files in your show.

Note how xLights uses its internal files, xseq, whenever it is playing sequences.
Nutcracker was written by Sean Meighan in Feb 2012 to create massive RGB animations. The flow in Nutcracker is different.

a) Create a target model. Megatree, Matrix .etc.
b) Pick effects and modify them.
c) Play the effects and see what they look like on animated gif preview
d) Repeat b and c until sastisfied with the effect
e) Export the effect for Vixen, LOR, LSP or HLS

For additional information, introduction to setup and use, video tutorials, or to download the latest version, navigate to http://www.nutcracker123.com/nutcracker/releases/