So I just recently did a musical review where all the singers stood on a total of 20 spots on the stage. These points were predetermined and so I decided to use xyz data instead of pan/tilt for all my movers.
The issue I kept running into was while the XY data was always right, I always had to adjust my Z_focus depending on singer height, zoom size, etc. I always wanted X_focus and Y_focus to reference the palette (for example, half way through tech, we moved 2 of the 20 points 2 feet toward center, so all I had to do was update the focus palettes). So as we programmed and constantly used z_focus it became frustrating to always drop the focus palette to absolute data when all we needed to be absolute was the z_focus.
At first I tried to create Focus Palettes with no Z_focus data but then it just took everything to the floor (Z_focus of 0) and we had to end up moving the z_focus a lot each time.
So the work around became, keep the z_focus at average height of the singers and adjust the Z_focus to where we wanted it per cue, then select X_focus, Y_focus and either sneak (to return to the focus palette already in the cue) or set them independently to the Focus Palette. We eventually wrote macros and this was relatively easy, but was still a lot of steps to do something that seems essential.
IDEA:
Have the option to make just the z_focus absolute data when recording a focus palette. Data for the z_focus should be able to be stored and recalled from the focus palette, but should not change x_focus and y_focus to absolute or manual data when the z_focus is changed.
It could also be argued that instead of making this an option, just make this the default behavior, but that's a larger conversation I'm sure.
