If you mean to optimize for fastest code, I just did it and it does seem to be more fluid, it still slows down a tiny bit but not as noticeable, and it also seems faster when the saber is not ignited.
And lockups look very cool!
Here’s a link to a video:
I was not really able to reproduce the boot up problem. However, I have tweaked the command delays a bit, so maybe it works better now?
I also recommend trying the v4.1 arduino-proffieboard plugin from the beta stream, as that seems to fix some problems for me.
I also put the display on the HF (high frequency) loop which should make it run smoothly even with lots of neopixels. (Of course, that could mean that the neopixels gets slower, we’ll see…)
The boot up issue got resolved when I turned optimizations on.
I’ll try v4.1 when I get a chance.
I’m down to help make the file.
Cairon59 actually did help out and we have one animation based on his work. Having more would be great if you’re interested though.
Thanks Profezzeron, I see later in the discussion that this is underway. I’m afk now but will take a look at the specs in the discussion and start building a blender demo file next week. I only have a 2.2 board so can’t test the files.
found this tutorial and project file that will help
Crystal 1
I’ll remake the crystal tutorial and include it in the distributed Blender file with a more user friendly controls for people unfamiliar with blender.
Started working in the crystal generator. I have two gnereators. The one on the right is the new one and is much simpler. I still want to work on the shader for the crystal.
Very cool. 
Hello, sorry for the lack of response, I’m full time on the renovation of my new house (+ my job).
@ez-set , it’s good to see that, you can find some textures I’ve used for the shading here:
Looking forward to seeing the result
I have been doing some crystal studies that might interest you
They are fully procedural, done in Houdini, so the color, shape, and details can be generated based on a random seed or user input. It would be very easy to throw them in a crystal chamber and render out a bunch of different crystal variations thanks to the procedural aspect.
With this I would render out all possible combinations, and then host them online and let people pick through them with a nice gui, rather than them having to learn houdini. But of course that file can be made public too
Very nice!
It’s good to have the sources for future modifications, or rendering in different sizes. Ideally we’d use blender, or something else open-source so that anybody could do the rendering, but beggars can’t be choosers.
The way I did if for our existing crystals was to render the crystal in Red, Green and Blue (but everything else identical) and then just interpolate between the images to get other colors.
Although now that I think about it, I realize that interpolating might not be the best since it won’t generate colors like full-brightness yellow… I should probably do the interpolation in HSL instead.
Not sure if the colors for these crystals is that simple though, I mean, a red crystal could have different colors in it too.
If we render out full values for R G and B, we should be able to just add the values to get full values for the inbetween colors, as long as we work in linear colorspace. Same way the idea of 1 1 0 turns on the red and green in a pixel to make Yellow.
The way I would approach it is to use a hue shift tool however, sliding all the color values together towards the desired color. Then you just render once and edit afterwards. And no worries about flakes or detail colors not matching, as they are all adjusted at the same rate: orange with red details becomes blue with green details for example.
Houdini does have a free version, not open source, that anyone could use. The learning curve is slightly higher than blender though. If you want the renders or the files though, I’d be happy to move forward with this
I’ll make a quick edit for the Hue shift to demonstrate what I mean. Be right back
Don’t mind the compression from the GIF formatting, I’m surprised it even got the color range that it did…
Adjusting just the Hue allows to change the colors of the image, while remaining relatively photoreal. Hence only needing one render, and no funky math. At least for the crystal layer
If the crystal is on it’s own layer, then that should work well.
The final layering will need to use as few layers as possible, so the script may need to composite the crystal into the crystal chamber, but that’s standard alpha-blending stuff.
