I have a touchdesigner project (download here) that I want to do two things:
Select 2 colors from color picker → create “heat image” effect on existing video (this I achieved). It reacts to audio, but that’s not important here.
Take those 2 colors, and make it so 2 strobe lights (using 2 martin atomic color scrollers) have the same 2 colors as the video. (I’m stuck here)
Problem: the 2 colors from the picker are in RGB format. The atomic scollers, however, just have a set of selected colors that you control by sending it a certain dmx value *on a single channel*. I recreated the colors in RGB and put them in a table:
color
dmx value
R
G
B
White
0
1
1
1
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Straw
26
0.996
0.867
0.596
undefined
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----
----
----
Amber
51
1
0.749
0
undefined
----
----
----
----
Orange
77
1
0.525
0
undefined
----
----
----
----
Red
105
0.506
0
0
undefined
----
----
----
----
Pink
130
1
0.686
0.784
undefined
----
----
----
----
Lavender
156
0.788
0.682
1
undefined
----
----
----
----
Aquamarine
181
0
1
1
undefined
----
----
----
----
Green Blue
207
0
0.62
0.541
undefined
----
----
----
----
Light Green
230
0.565
0.933
0.565
undefined
----
----
----
----
Blue
255
0
0
1
undefined
----
----
----
----
I feel like there should be an easy way to do this, finding the minimum difference between the picked color value, and the colors in the table, then using a lookup to find the dmx value for that rgb value, and sending it to a dmx out. But I have no clue how to actually proceed.
Any TD Gods have any tips? I tried searching the forum and reddit but no luck yet.
Are the two colours for the strobes being determined by the colour picker, or by the processed heat image ?
If it comes from the colour picker, then just have certain specific colours in your picker, each assigned to a particular colour on your scroller I.
Based on the RGB table you provided, consider that some colour are very “close” to each other, and will compete a bit. For example Straw and Pink have RGB values that are very similar, while blue has auch bigger domain. This is something relevant to keep in mind when calculating the colour… Instictively I would divide the entire colour hue in 11 rectangles of different sizes (one for each colour in the scroller, including open white). If the colour selection falls within a particular rectangle, that’s the colour that will be reproduced by the scroller..
Maybe you already tested this, but keep in mind that a colour scroller is actually a wide strip made of different cuts of filters, taped together with a heat resistant clear tape, then mounted on two spring loaded cylinders, controlled by a little servo motor via DMX.
As far as I know colour scrollers are not really designed to constantly jump from one colour to another, the gel strip might break, the motor might fry and/or lose calibration. The other thing is that when you go for example from Straw to Green, you’ll see all the colours in between for a moment, as the scroller has to physically scroll from one colour to another.