A special application of the Canon comes from first imagining that it might be able to do something that you have seen done in real life then going about figuring out if and how it can be done.
Another method is thru pure experimentation which can lead to some serendipities. A happy accident like this discovery: ==> Canon Weave , in case you have not seen it.
The Canon Bollywood, as I have named it, was IMAGINED and then an effort was made to actualize it, not sure if it could be done at the time. Luckily it was able to be done. I will illustrate the steps and procedure below for future reference.
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Watch the video above==> Canon Bollywood
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I may have been influenced sub-consciously by the DanceDiva product created by Jemma that allows real dancers to solo and then auto-return into place in formation. This video illustrates Jemma’s product except my SmartDancer uses a mix of Animesh AND real avatar dancers (8 and 1). They each do their own solos then return back into formation. The following example demonstrates just one of the many different types of Canon features of SmartDancer that exemplifies the soloing of the Canon feature. Watch the video: ==> Canon Finish
Also I may have been subconsciously influenced by Aura Fitzgerald in my imagination with her rendition of her Penguins dance routine. Watch this video ==> Easy as ABC – Penguinettes
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First thing we always want to do is turn OFF hover text and make the SD Controller invisible. This is done thru the OPTIONS sub-menu.
Next we want to pre-pare a few settings. We would normally do these using commands at showtime using a notecard so that they happen automatically when triggered by a chat-command from the Artiste HUD AutoFX or other similar chat-command emitting HUDs, but for illustrative purposes we will show you how to use the SmartDancer Controller menus and buttons to accomplish the same effect since this is the method that was used to experiment my imagination and discover IF this Bollywood effect could actually be done.
The order of the execution of procedures/commandsbelow does not matter.
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The magic comes from experimenting and determining the ideal CanonDurationOverride also referred to as the CanonIntervalOverride so don’t be confused.
To get to this setting choose [GROUPINGS] button from main menu then press the MoveSpeed button.
It is simply the length of time that each Canon Solo Dance takes to complete their solo dance turn before executing a different animation. The OVERRIDE part comes into play because it OVERRIDES what is on the notecards inside the Animesh dancers as well as inside the Poseball Avatar Dancers. It has the highest level o f overriding. Recall that there are 3 levels of override. At the Animesh/Poseball level, at the Controller level, and at the RUNTIME (in this case controller/menu/button) level which is similar to RUNTIME.
0.2 is the perfect length of time to elicit the effect we want. 0.1 was too fast and 0.3 was too slow, in my personal opinion.
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The CanonDance is the dance that produces the effect you want to execute in this Bollywood-style staggered effect. It needs to be DIFFERENT than the initial dance that’s being done so that you can see the impact that it is a separate dance style. So above we see the special effect dance chosen was BenBhang8. The Initial dance would have been something else. In our case we chose Bodi (*Bodhisattva).
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Choosing the HOLD is essential to making this work otherwise the dancers would resume their pre-canon (backing) dance after the CanonIntervalOverride had expired. We want to watch the effect repeat UNTIL WE decide we want it to terminate manually while expermenting. There needs to be overlap and if it ended after 0.2 seconds then we would never see all the dancers in the special animation together.
The CanonOrder ($123495678) was implemented to insure that our middle (WHITE OUTFIT – me) dancer performs her routine in the proper order. She is number 9 (R of J-R) but we want her to perform 5th else she will appear to perform her animation out of order. (Note: She is lined up in the middle or 5th position). You will find out that most of the time, the 9th or R dancer works out better when he/she is lined up in the middle of the other 8 (or 6 or 4 or 2) dancers.
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So we are now ready to perform the routine.
We start by choosing a backing animation. *Bodhisattva.
We let that play for a bit then we need to reorient the dancers in a straight line to show the effect aligned. We use a June effect to rotate the line of dancers. We use SetJuneLeft. (We have updated the junes so that they happen automatically now and assume the use of the previous formation since that’s usually what people want. It saves a step). If we wanted the effect to run backwards to front then we could have simply chosen SetJuneRight. Or more preferred is to set the CanonSequence (C Sequence) to REVERSE.
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Also make sure your Patterning is set to all the dancers if you by chance happened to set it to something else, otherwise do not worry about it.
Example; j-r or jklmnopqr or all. They all do the same thing.
(Note that the short-cuts, like all only have only been tested and insured to work, currently, when you have 9 dancers).
[Options]–>[EFFECTS]–>Target
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So after all the settings are made you are ready to execute the
command that sets the special effect into motion. A Canon (direction) command. Since we are doing Anims Only and no turns, then it does not matter which Canon (direction) command we choose. We will pick CanonHome since that seems to be the preferred choice of those who use it.
So your settings should all look similar as they do below. You can use this as a checklist reference.
So to present the effect we will:
1 – Start with Bodi Animation
2 – JuneLeft to align dancers behind each other
3 – Start the Canon using CanonHome
4 – StopCanon
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Here is a reference to the SEQUENCER commands one might use:
1 thru 4 can in executed in a sequence anytime prior to starting the routine
1,Hold | 0.1
2,CanonOrder,$123495678 | 0.1
3,Speed,-1%-1%0.2 | 0.1
4,CanonDance,*Bodi | 0.1
5 thru 10 can in executed in a sequence when you are ready to start and sync with the music
5,Dance,Bodi | 0.1
6,June,Left | 0.1
7,Canon,Home | ???
8,June,Right | ???
9,StopCanon | ???
10,StopAll | ???
[Options]>>READ_SEQ / PLAY_SEQ