I'm not sure how many attributes you need to control Arena using DMX but if you plan on using the DMX Auto Map, you should dedicate a full DMX universe to Resolume or you will get confusing results. Now, if you are only planning to use a few attribute, then you don't need to worry about that.
So let's say you're planning on using only a few, as I mentioned in my first post, you'll want to turn off DMX Auto Map and if it's your first time mapping DMX, make sure you remove all the DMX mappings for the Composition by pressing 'Remove All' so that you can start from scratch.
As a disclaimer, I'm not a GrandMa2 expert but it's a light board so essentially it'll be the same as any other light board that can control moving intelligent lighting. You could think of Arena as a a collection of independent channels you control individually or create a fixture with all the channels you want to control as a whole or create several fixtures with any group of channels you want to control as a subset. That decision is really up to you and should match your work flow.
Whether you use DMX Auto Map or not, make sure you look at the Resolume Arena DMX Auto Map Sheet.pdf document to understand how DMX works in Arena.
All DMX channels are described in a separate PDF document. The most recent version of this document can always be found in the application folder next to the PDF version of this manual.
In order to control Arena precisely, you'll need to express DMX in decimal 8-bit values (0 to 255) not percentages (0 to 100) but sometimes you might find that using percentages is easier if what you're controlling is express in percentages in Arena such as Opacity which goes from 0.0 to 1.0.
There'll be 3 case scenarios in Arena:
- 1- Arena requires a value such Playmode (0, 1, 2, 3) or Trigger Column (0 to 255)as then use Decimal
- As a note, Trigger Column will be a bit confusing because a value of 0 will trigger Column 1, 1 will trigger Column 2, etc.... but you'll' get use to it!
2- Arena requires a range such as Opacity from 0.0 to 1.0 or Transition Time from 0.0 to 10.0 then use Percentage
3 - Arena requires a range from a negative value to a positive value such as Pan from -1.0 to 1.0 or Rotate X from -180˚ to 180˚ then you can use either Decimal or Percentage that's really up to your personal preference but chances are you'll need to create a cheat sheet if you need precise values. - As a note, keep in mind that in Decimal 8-bit, 128 will be your center (0 value) and 0/255 your extreme values whereas it'll be 50 and 0/100 in Percentage
So, in GrandMa2 make sure you select Decimal/Percentage for each channel based on what makes the most sense to control any given Arena function.
Good luck