Advanced Soft Edge

[Dragonsoulj]

Any way we could get an advanced soft edge? My thought is having individual settings for top, left, right, and bottom, as well as not using global soft edge settings (gamma, gamma colors, luminance, etc). A couple edges we have don't need the same settings as other edges.

[lightbx]

+1 for manually selecting which edges to soften

Also, HOLY COW! I just read the full list of updates to Arena 6. This is a serious game changer! Amazing work, team. Can't wait to give it a test run.

This request does date back to 4/20/16 though (nice), and I believe I've seen essentially this request appear in other threads. I would assume this is a common enough need for people using Arena in professional settings.

Personally, I encountered this issue while using a Matrox DualHead Digital SE (not the most professional option, I know) to stack two projectors displaying the same region of the projected image, for added brightness (not ideal, but we sourced 4 free projectors for the project). Two slices with the same Input Selection, with the Output of one slice assigned to the left side of the DualHead Output, and the other to the right side. Both slices displayed the lower portion of a vertical projection (1920x3375), so I only needed to soften the top edge of each slice. For some reason (I predict because both slices were overlapping on the input), Arena defaulted to softening both the top and bottom edges of each slice, even though they were snapped to the lowest edge of the screen (so there was no content and no slice for them to blend with). In the end, I used edge blending within the projectors. It worked out, but made me curious why there isn't more control over soft edge.

[Joris]

Individual control over the blends is a bigger task then we had time for, unfortunately.

Right now, you can work around this problem with stacked projectors by using Virtual Screens.

Make two Virtual Screens that do nothing more than taking your composition output and pass it through unaffected. In your actual blend screen, make one set of the stacked slices take their input from Virtual 1, the other from Virtual 2.

Because there's no reason to blend two slices with different inputs, Arena won't blend them, and you can have individual adjustable blends for each.

It's a workaround, I know, but it will tie you over until we have the time to come up with something better.

[livpas]

for more specific soft edge, I place a gradient generator set from black to transparent on a layer faded out. in Advance Output I create slices that only sample that layer and then edit the output points to create a very controlled blend. Attached is a sample of the mapping in resolume and one without the blend layer as well as the final and the final.

[lightbx]

Joris, your responses are always so thorough and considerate and informative. Keep up the amazing work!

Livpas, you're a genius.

[jcmatos]

It would indeed be very nice to have custom edge blends! +1 for that solution