Lights on the Stage
Every fixture of your patch can stand on the 3D stage, with its beam, its colour and its gobo, lit as the Lighting output plays. You see each look in 3D and as a flat plan, aim heads with a click, hang fixtures on trusses and drive real projectors. The 3D views are part of Stage (Beta).
Stage views
The Lighting window has four stage views, each a panel of its own: Perspective, Plan view, Front view and Section view. The Stage layout shows the Perspective view large, with the Plan view and the Section view beside it. Open more from the Panels menu; a second one of a kind is numbered, for example "Perspective 2".
The menu in a view's corner picks what it looks at: its own view, or any camera or projector of the stage to look through. "Scroll orbits, Shift-scroll pans, pinch dollies, H frames". On Windows: "Wheel orbits, Shift-wheel pans, Ctrl-wheel or pinch dollies, H frames". See Move around the room for every gesture.
The Plan panel is a flat plan of the rig for picking: "Click selects, Shift adds, Command toggles; a box left to right takes what it encloses, right to left what it touches; drag or arrow keys move". Select beams picks single beams of a fixture with many cells, such as an LED bar.
Left click picks a fixture, right click opens its menu (see The Fixtures list).
Aim
Select heads, turn on Aim in a stage view, and click on the stage: every selected head turns its pan and tilt to shine at that point. Drag and the beams follow the pointer on every frame. Aiming changes the programmer, like any value: store it in a preset or a step to keep it. Esc leaves Aim.
Store aim as offset (right-click a fixture) keeps what the aim differs from the look under it as the fixture's offset, so every look lands on the new spot. See Fixture options.
Arrange fixtures
Drag a fixture to move it on the stage; it moves on every frame of the drag and the move is one undo step. With fixtures selected, the Align menu lines them up and Mirror Horizontally and Mirror Vertically mirror them.
The fixture order menu sets "The order fans spread the selected fixtures in; Use spacing spreads by their places in the group layouts": Selection order, Left to right, Right to left, Top to bottom, Bottom to top, Name, A to Z, Name, Z to A, Address, low to high, Address, high to low, Random, fixed and Random, each cycle.
House lights and beams
The glass bar at the bottom of a Perspective view holds two sliders. They change only the 3D picture, never the DMX:
- House lights: how bright the room is around the rig. Venue {n} % sets it to a working light to edit in; it goes down while a show plays.
- Beams: how much the air shows the beams.
Each slider moves the picture live while you drag it, and the release is one undo step. While Blind is on, the bar shows Blind: the views show your edits, the rig does not.
Visualise
Visualise: "Show the DMX another console sends on the stage, not the Lighting output". Turn it on to see the look of another lighting desk on Cliqer's stage, for example to check a console's show before you are in the room. It is live and never saved: opening a show turns it off.
Trusses
A truss holds fixtures. Choose Draw truss in a stage view or in the Stage window to draw one:
| Setting | Choices |
|---|---|
| Shape | Straight, Arc, Circle or Rectangle. |
| Profile | Single tube, Ladder, Triangular, Rectangular or Folding. |
| Length, Width, Height | Its size. |
Trusses also come from the Objects library and from MVR files, with their connectors. Drag a fixture onto a truss and it snaps on and hangs there. Hang on truss and Unhang are in the Object Manager's right-click menu and the Stage menu.
The truss section of the inspector shows its Connectors and its load: Weight per metre, Own weight, Hung weight, Total and the Centre of mass along it. Each figure says where it comes from: From data, Estimate or Unknown. The Truss load report lists them all.
Projectors
A projector on the stage can also be a fixture of the patch: Cliqer then moves its lens and dims it over Art-Net. Built-in types cover the Epson EB-PU2220B series and the Panasonic PT-DZ21K2 series over Art-Net. A projector imported from MVR or a Capture show lands on the stage, with its raster and a zoom fitted to its screen.
Under the patch list, the projector panel of the picked projector has:
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Arm control | "Arm control before Cliqer can move this projector. Arming sets light output to the level in Lighting, 100 % unless you set it first, so a dimmed projector jumps. Turn on Art-Net on the projector. Panasonic: Art-Net is off by default and CHANNEL SETTING must match the patch. If Cliqer crashes or the computer sleeps during a lens move, the lens can keep moving: stop it on the projector." Armed, it reads "Armed: Cliqer controls this projector." |
| Lens Shift X, Lens Shift Y, Zoom, Focus | Hold a key to move the lens; it stops when you let go. |
| Speed | Fine, Low or High. |
| Lens memory | Recall a lens position stored on the projector. |
Projectors that share an address arm together: "Shares its address with {names}: they arm together." Arming is live and never an undo step. Until a projector is armed, its channels hold still with its shutter closed.
Plans
Placing and moving fixtures, trusses and objects on the stage is part of Stage (Beta), on the Max, Ultra, Enterprise and Event Pass plans and in the Free trial. See Plans and limits.
Windows and macOS
The stage views, Aim, Align and Mirror, House lights and Beams, Visualise, trusses and the projector panel are on both, with the same words. The gestures differ as on the Stage page.