MA LIGHTING GrandMA 2 OnPC Lighting Control Software with Command Wing.
In the interviews I've done lately for articles in CPM, I've noticed that more and more I'm hearing the grandMA2 mentioned as a church's lighting control solution, and not merely by the ultra-large megachurches of the world. I've never had the pleasure of working with a GrandMA2, and was excited for this opportunity to take a look at MA Lighting's more cost-effective solution, GrandMA2 OnPC with a command wing.
Overview
The grandMA2 system is designed to handle extremely large and complicated lighting shows. The OnPC version can support up to 4,096 parameters (I.e., DMX addresses), or eight universes of DMX, and provides all the functionality of the console version of the system—and there is no charge for the software. You provide your own PC to run it, and you need to purchase either a command wing, fader wing, or OnPC nodes to enable the software to actually output some form of lighting control signals. (Even if you just want ArtNet output over your computer's Ethernet port, you need to have some sort of hardware from MA Lighting to enable this functionality.) I evaluated the system with the OnPC Command Wing (MSRP $8,250).
The GrandMA2 is a serious moving light console with lots of features for dealing with fixtures with the usual set of attributes. It also provides access to control media servers (I was not in a position to test this functionality), as well as basic dimmers for static fixtures. Numerous sequences (lists of cues) are supported, as well as virtually unlimited cues per sequence, presets for attributes—basically, it has the same base functionality as most serious moving light consoles, so I'm not going to go into a lot of detail on that, since the more interesting aspects of this console are in how it presents the features, and how you can interact with them. Suffice to say the chance of GrandMA2 OnPC not being able to handle your rig and show is pretty much zero.
Layout
Offering the same button layout as a GrandMA2 console, the OnPC Command Wing provides access to the frequently used commands via hard keys, provides six executors for playing back lighting sequences (multiple pages of executors are available), two universes of DMX output as well as one universe of DMX input (this input port can be configured as a third DMX output); four encoder wheels along the top of the wing for controlling attributes such as color, beam parameters, etc.; a dedicated intensity wheel on the lower right; and a grand master fader. The hardware is well built, and doesn't have a large footprint.
The GrandMA2 consoles are designed with touch screens, and while not required, you'd do well to set up your OnPC system on a touch-screen computer, preferably with additional monitors attached. If you can only connect one additional monitor to your chosen PC platform, you might want to consider using a Matrox Dual or Triple Head To Go box to let you connect two or three monitors as your second monitor output.
The free MA 3D visualizer, designed to work exclusively with the GrandMA2 consoles and OnPC, MA 3D lets you design a 3D model of your room and lighting rig and will visualize your show for you, enabling off-line programming at home.
Major Features
The GrandMA2 system's first claim to fame is that it's designed to be completely customized by the user. The software is designed with six screen areas into which the user can populate all sorts of built-in GrandMA2 windows. I counted 65 different windows that the user can choose from, displaying information such as cue lists, presets, hardware status, etc. By default, when you first run the program and start a new show, none of these windows are pre-loaded into any of the screens. You literally start with a blank slate, which makes initial interactions with the GrandMA2 software a challenge—a little like if when you buy a new car, the dash board was blank and you had a big box of controls and readouts that you need to place on the dashboard before you can go anywhere. However, it does come with a number of demo shows, and if you use these as your initial learning tool, that will provide pre-configured window arrangements and settings so you can see what's possible.
When you add a user profile for yourself into the console and associate a user name, all your screen and window information, along with other personal preferences, are stored into your user profile, and that user profile can be exported and loaded into another console to automatically configure that console the way you're used to looking at it. It's expected that after a few weeks of working with the system and learning it, you will develop a way of working with the console that you like, and configure your screens and windows accordingly.
Five of the screen areas have a set of 10 soft buttons (view buttons) down the right side, into which you can store views. Each view is a saved arrangement of windows for that screen (or up to all screens), so you can set up a series of views and easily switch between them in that screen. This especially helps with the OnPC version, where you don't have all the extra screens that the GrandMA2 full-size console gives you.
A unique feature of the GrandMA2 line is the free MA 3D visualizer. Designed to work exclusively with the GrandMA2 consoles and OnPC, MA 3D lets you design a 3D model of your room and lighting rig and will visualize your show for you, enabling off-line programming at home. In the three hours I played with it, I was able to model a simple room and set up a set of fixtures. MA 3D talks to OnPC through a Gigabit Ethernet link, and when attached to the same MA Lighting session, communicate back and forth. When you add a fixture in OnPC, the fixture shows up automatically in MA 3D, and you use the tools in MA 3D to position it within your model. MA 3D lets you add people, instruments, staging, truss—pretty much anything you'd need to do a basic 3D model of your venue. It is pretty slick. To streamline the use of MA 3D MA Lighting offers a free Vectorworks plug-in that will automatically patch and position all your fixtures in the GrandMA2 software and MA 3D.
There's another advantage to setting up your lighting plot using MA 3D. The console also sees where you've physically placed your fixtures, and if you open up the stage view window in OnPC, you see a wireframe view of your rig and room model. You can then use this view to select fixtures by clicking on them or “lassoing” them with the mouse, and then dragging the focal point of the fixtures (represented by a line vectoring out from the lens of the fixture) with the mouse to control pan and tilt. This is a super-fast way to get your movers aimed, either for programming cues or for programming presets.
The Grandma2 is absolutely a powerful system, with a lot of flexibility.
The GrandMA2 is also a multi-user system. When you build a show, you start by creating a session. Other users, logging into the GrandMA2 system under their own credentials, can log into other copies of OnPC or actual consoles, and join your session. You can then divvy up the work load of programming a show. For example, let's say you need to program a special event at your church, and you have a pretty serious lighting rig: lots of conventional fixtures, a bunch of moving lights located on the floor of the stage, and a bunch of moving lights located in truss over the stage. You could have three copies of OnPC connected to the session, and have one operator responsible for the conventional lights, another for the stage-based movers, and another for the truss-based movers. The lighting designer for the event can then tell her team of three programmers the look she wants, and the three programmers can work independently on setting it up, and do so much quicker than if one programmer had to do it all. Then, once the look is satisfactory, one programmer stores the cue, and that cue contains all the information from all programmers. In my testing, this worked very reliably, and I could see it being a huge advantage in a large show. And the extra cost in having two more copies of OnPC to work with for the extra programmers? $0. The software is free, and will work networked like this with no additional hardware needed other than a generic Gigabit network switch (which is cheap).
User Experience
The GrandMA2 is absolutely a powerful system, with a lot of flexibility. The integration with a free 3D visualizer is sweet, and the stage view in the GrandMA2 software makes it really easy to work with moving lights.
The GrandMA2 system is also very stable. I encountered no problems at all in using the software, either the OnPC console software or the MA 3D program.
However, that flexibility comes with a price: it has a pretty steep learning curve, and there are aspects of it that aren't intuitive until you've used them for a while. Sometimes the console wants clarification on what exactly I want to do, and none of the options presented seem like the right thing to pick. And the documentation is not extremely helpful—it's written more as a reference for people who already know the concepts and just need a reminder. Questions that come up during the learning curve about overall concepts and workflow can be directed to A.C.T. Lighting's very responsive technical support team (A.C.T. Lighting Inc is the exclusive distributor of MA products in North America).
In talking to people who love the GrandMA range of products, they've commented that it usually takes two to three months of regular use to get to where they feel they really understand it. If you don't have a technical production staff person to dedicate the time to really learn the console and support your volunteers on Sunday mornings, this system may be a challenge.
I would enjoy getting more fully familiar with the GrandMA2 and would like to use it in a show sometime. The first few shows, though, I'd want plenty of extra time to figure out what exactly I need to tell the console to get what I want out of it. Once that learning curve is conquered, I believe it would be a very fun and effective system to use. Given that both the 3D visualizer and the OnPC software are free downloads, you can get pretty far with evaluating how it works by building your venue in MA 3D and using it for training before you have to plunk down any of your hard-won budget dollars.
