Release history

What's new in LMX.

New features land in LMX regularly. Every one of them is here, newest first.

Download the Beta See all features

  1. 0.10

    Run the show from your phone, framing shutters and a fixture editor you can read

    • Run the show from your phone. LMX serves a page to any phone, tablet or laptop on the same network, and it is now three tabs that do the job a phone is actually for. Playback is the whole cue list with every cue on it: tap one to take a rehearsal from that point, GO, STOP, the grand master, and a blackout you hold for a second rather than tap, so a stray touch in the dark cannot put the show out. Faders is the page the desk is showing, a strip each, with working page chips and a FLASH that is held rather than latched. Targets does the whole job from the floor: pick a target, capture fixtures to it, highlight them so you can see which lantern you are holding, drag it across a plan of your own stage with the beams following, then keep the move or drop it.
    • Turn the remote on with a setting, and open it by scanning a QR code. Configuration → Remote decides whether the desk serves the page at all, and the choice is saved with the show, so a venue that would rather not have a web server on its network turns it off once. While it is on, that page shows the desk's address as a QR code: point a phone camera at the screen and the remote opens, with nothing typed in the dark.
    • The remote looks like the desk, because it is reading the desk's own colours. Green is the cue that is live and amber is the one GO would fire next, GO names the cue it will fire, every fader is the console's own fader, and the target plan is the Target Editor's stage box, lanterns and captured-fixture red, following the plan rotation you set at the desk. Pinch the plan to zoom up to twelve times in, so a bar of lanterns a few inches apart on a phone spreads out far enough to drop a target between them.
    • A target can be moved and saved from the command line. TARGET MOVE 3 POS 7 5.5 1.6 moves target 3 live, with every fixture captured to it swinging across as it goes, while the show carries on holding the old position; TARGET SAVE 3 keeps the new one and TARGET REVERT 3 puts it back. That is what the target editor window has always done, now sayable as three commands, so a target can be set by whoever is standing on the mark rather than by whoever is at the desk.
    • STOP and KILL are buttons now, under both cue lists. Fading a list out or cutting it dead meant typing at the command line, which is the one thing you do not want to be doing when a cue has gone wrong in front of an audience. STOP sits next to GO and fades the list out; KILL is over at the end of the row, clear of the button you press most, and cuts it with no fade.
    • There is a mirror ball in the visualiser, and it throws real light. Hang one from Visualiser → Objects and it turns at two revolutions a minute, tiled with flat mirrors like the real thing, the facet count following the diameter the way a real ball's does. Point a beam at it and every tile the beam is on sends a pencil of its own back out in that lantern's colour, so a tight beam gives you a handful of rays and opening the zoom fills the room with dots. Two lanterns of different colours do not mix, dots landing further away are dimmer, and a prop standing in the way breaks one.
    • Lanterns are lit like solid objects. A dark moving head used to read as a cut-out, because every surface the key light missed was painted exactly one shade. There is now a fill from the opposite side and an ambient that is brighter from above, the crook of a yoke and the underside of a base sit in their own shadow, and bodies are shaded from the smoothing their own mesh files have always carried, so a twelve-sided barrel is a barrel rather than twelve visible facets. Nothing got brighter and nothing costs anything to draw: the work happens once, when the fixture is first built.
    • Framing shutters cut the beam in the 3D view. Point a profile spot at the stage, push the blades in, and the pool comes out framed - a hard-edged square, a slot, a tilted edge - with the shaft in the haze cut to match. The blades work the way the fixture's own do, and the blade edge softens with focus and frost exactly as a gobo's does. A framing move stored in a cue crossfades like every other attribute.
    • Coloured gobos project their colour. A coloured gobo is a dichroic, not a mask: it passes some wavelengths and stops the rest, exactly as a colour wheel slot does one position further along the optics. The pattern now reaches the stage in the colour it really is, at the brightness it really passes.
    • Bars, battens and cyc units throw the shape their lens really is. A metre-long pixel bar used to throw a circular pool and a beam you could cover with your hand, because every fixture fired a cone. A lantern's beam is now its aperture swept by its divergence, so a strip lens throws a sheet and a single lens still throws a cone.
    • A fixture editor you can read. The channel list is a browser filed by what each channel does, with an icon per channel and a filter box above it; the mode's whole DMX footprint is drawn to scale across the top, so a hole in the patch or a channel claimed twice is a shape rather than numbers to compare; and the inspector beside it holds one channel at a time, in cards titled by subject.
    • A Head column, and a rest position you can drag. A five-zone wash carries RED, GREEN, BLUE and WHITE five times over, and the list now says which cell each belongs to. A channel's travel is drawn as a fader with the rest position on the handle, spelled out in the channel's own unit and in raw DMX, and dragging the handle sets the default.
    • Lens flares fade as you pan. A lamp's flare used to appear and vanish between one frame and the next as the camera crossed its beam; flares now come up and go out smoothly, and stay inside the beam they belong to instead of burning on outside it.
    • REPORT files a beta issue without leaving the desk. Type it and a window opens with the commands that led up to the problem already gathered, and the show they happened in attached. Reports have a home on the website, where you can read what you have filed.

  2. 0.9.7

    A fixture editor that holds the whole fixture

    • A saved fixture comes back out identical to the one you opened. Editing a fixture that came from a GDTF import used to write back only what the editor's own controls could express and silently drop the rest - which was most of the profile, including what tells LMX that a channel is a shutter rather than a strobe rate, or an additive cyan rather than a filter.
    • Colour temperature, tint, hue and saturation are channel types you can pick. None of the four had an entry in the Type list, so a channel of any of those kinds was quietly re-typed as "custom" on save - which moves a control into a different programmer bank, or none, and stops it fading between cues.
    • Heads and the emitter layout belong to the mode. A GDTF mode names its own geometry, so switching mode in the editor now switches the head list and the emitter layout with it, and a multi-mode fixture keeps the cells each mode actually has.
    • The Multiply master picker says which head it means. A nine-zone wash has one virtual intensity master per zone, and the picker collapsed them into a single unlabelled entry. Each row is now offered the master belonging to its own head, labelled "Intensity (Head 3)", and a master the fixture could never bind to that row is not offered at all.
    • New Segment and Capability detail panels. The fields that decide what a channel *means* rather than what it does - the GDTF attribute, the colour temperature a slot selects, whether a range puts a prism in the gate and how many facets it has, the manufacturer's own slot name, a tint's neutral point - can be read and written for the first time.
    • The emitter editor reaches the whole emitter. Depth along the beam axis, each emitter's own aperture radius, the half-height of a rectangular lit face, the rectangle ratio, and the ring an emitter sits on are all editable; before, only X, Y and head were.

  3. 0.9.6

    Moving heads that move, and optics that behave

    • Moving heads swing their bodies, not just their beams. Pan or tilt a Martin MAC, an Elation Artiste Picasso or an ADJ Focus Flex and the yoke and head stayed bolted still while the beam swept across the stage. The lantern now moves with its light, and three tilting bars tilt their heads for the first time.
    • Frost, focus and the iris are drawn. Swing frost in and the beam spreads, its edge goes soft and the gobo stops imaging. Rack the focus and the gate blurs either side of sharp, with a faint colour fringe that swaps sides as a real lens does. Close the iris and the beam and its pool get smaller without getting brighter - it clips rather than zooming, which is the difference you see on stage.
    • A prism splits the beam in the 3D view. LMX has always driven the channel and the visualiser ignored it, so a fixture with its prism in showed one beam. It now draws the copies the fixture really throws, indexed or spinning, at the facet count its own file states.
    • Lanterns look like lanterns. Bodies are painted matte black rather than light grey, and VISUALISER BODYBRIGHTNESS puts how brightly they are lit under your hand.
    • Ninety moving heads in the library, and forty more house fixtures behind them. The Robe MegaPointe, the Clay Paky Sharpy, the Martin MAC range and the Ayrton line, every one with its own 3D model - and a bundled showfile with every moving fixture in the library rigged on it, to look through before you patch anything.
    • Levels the way every other desk does them. 1 THRU 8 @ FULL works, @ means intensity, and FULL and OUT mean 100 and 0. The command line completes attribute names as you type them and says what a value may be in the fixture's own units.
    • A smoother desk under show load. Storing a cue or editing the show mid-performance no longer costs dropped DMX frames, fades and effects run faster on large rigs, and cue jumps land noticeably quicker.

  4. 0.9.5

    Colour temperature, tint and realistic light pools

    • Colour temperature and tint. A fixture's CTC or CTO channel now reads in Kelvin beside the colour picker, with a green/magenta tint alongside it where the fixture offers one.
    • A temperature scale that matches the lantern. Pick a temperature on a warm-to-cool slider, detented at the steps your fixture actually offers, without disturbing a colour you have already set.
    • HSI and HSV colour support. The colour wheel now drives fixtures that state their colour as a hue angle and a purity rather than by mixing emitters.
    • Colour crossfades on temperature, tint and hue. All three now fade like every other colour channel, and a hue fades the short way round.
    • Light pools with a real falloff. Beams fall off from the centre of the pool to its edge with a lens-accurate soft edge, adjustable per fixture and switchable with VISUALISER POOL ON|OFF.
    • Much faster start-up. LMX reads each fixture profile as it is patched instead of the whole library up front, so it opens in a fraction of a second however large the library grows.
    • Library updates reach existing installs. New factory fixtures now arrive with every update, and anything you import or edit is kept separately and always wins over the shipped version.

  5. 0.9.3

    A doubled fixture library and a bigger visualiser

    • The fixture library has doubled. ETC, Chauvet Ovation, Chroma-Q, Prolights and Strand LED house stock, every one shipping its own 3D model.
    • Far more lights in the visualiser. Light data now lives in a texture rather than in shader registers, so the ceiling is no longer your graphics card's to set.
    • Efficient multi-cell fixtures. Cells that share a colour and point the same way are drawn as one pool and beam cone, so far more multi-cell fixtures fit in the light budget with nothing about the picture changed.
    • A colour wheel per lamp. Fixtures with a second lamp, such as the Rogue R3X Wash, get their own wheel and sliders for each.
    • Clear warning when a mode cannot light in 3D. Patching one now names the reason, and the Patch Wizard marks it in the mode list so you can see it before you choose.
    • Better feedback on head selection. Ask for a head a fixture hasn't got and the desk names the heads it does have, leaving your selection exactly as it was.

  6. 0.9.1

    A searchable manual and more rep stock

    • Press F1 and you get a manual, not a text file. Help is one window with a contents tree, a document pane and Back, Forward and Contents buttons that behave like a browser.
    • Search the whole manual, by feature rather than by name. Every page is searched section by section and indexed on the words operators use, so "move in black" finds Premove and "no output" finds Troubleshooting.
    • Help for every part of the desk, including references generated from the app itself. The command reference is generated from the parser and the control reference from the running application, so neither can drift from what the console really does.
    • Batch downloads from GDTF Share. Tick as many models as you like, across searches and manufacturers, and download or import the lot behind one progress bar you can cancel.
    • Far more fixtures, every one with its own 3D model. Theatre lanterns lead them, headed by the ETC Source Four in every barrel angle, with blinders, PARs, cyc units, house-light dimmers and floods behind. Fixture models now travel with LMX.
    • Quick Access reads like a desk. Palettes, presets, SFX and targets each get their own scrolling row, picking one releases the last unless you hold Ctrl or Shift, and the right-click fader moves the light as you drag it.

  7. 0.9

    Show generation and visualiser settings

    • GENERATE turns a patched rig into a show you can run. One command, or the Generate button on the Fixtures & Groups tab, builds the groups, palettes, presets, targets and SFX, or just the kind you name.
    • Look before you commit, and re-run whenever you like. A preview lists everything that would be built and says why anything was left out, and generating again fills the gaps while leaving your own edits untouched.
    • Groups that know where each light hangs. LMX works out the bars, side runs and booms from the rig itself and orders each group along the bar, so a fan or an effect sweeps the room.
    • Position looks that stay editable. Fan-shaped looks are stored as a centre plus a fan intent, exactly like a hand-programmed fan, so they re-expand on recall and follow group membership.
    • Fans take wings and blocks. Split a selection into mirrored fans about its centre, or buddy neighbours together, in effects as well as in fans.
    • Every visualiser setting where you expect it. Render settings that lived only inside the 3D window now have a home in System Configuration, alongside Playback, Art-Net and Performance settings that were command-line only.
    • A version number you can say out loud. The build number is no longer welded onto the version, so LMX calls itself v0.9 with the build alongside it rather than v0.4.1625.

  8. 0.8.1

    Quick Access and a faster visualiser

    • Quick Access puts everything you stored one click away. A new first tab in the programmer shows a tile for every palette, preset, SFX and target valid for what you have selected, with a right-click fader to apply one at a percentage.
    • The visualiser stops dragging the desk down. Running with the 3D window open no longer makes the app sluggish, with nothing about the picture changed.
    • A typo stops being a dead end. A malformed number on the console's most-used commands now reports what was expected and carries on, instead of leaving your text stranded in the input box.

  9. 0.7.5

    Blind preview, MIDI pads and fader pages

    • Preview a blind edit in the 3D visualiser. Merge your blind look into the live scene or show it on its own, while DMX, Art-Net, sACN and USB output keep sending the real look to the rig.
    • Map the pads on your controller, not just the faders. MIDI note messages now work alongside control changes, so grid and pad surfaces are fully mappable and feedback lights a pad while its flash button is held.
    • Learn a control instead of looking it up. Detect mode waits for you to move a fader, hit a pad or press a key combination, then fills the mapping in for you.
    • Fader pages. Faders are organised into pages, each one a whole separate set of playbacks that any fader command can address directly, and faders you left up on one page stay live while you work on another.
    • Steadier USB-DMX output. Output now runs at a frame rate the wire can sustain, with a configurable guard time after each frame, clearing up flicker that showed worst at high DMX addresses.

  10. 0.7

    Show control and flexible saving

    • Open Sound Control (OSC) in and out. LMX can now exchange control and show data with other software, apps and hardware.
    • Hands-free cue sequences. Follow, delay and jump cues automatically trigger the next cue, and can loop parts of your show for unattended operation.
    • Export only the parts of a show you need. New save scopes let you export the patch, objects, everything but cues, and more.
    • Safe renumbering throughout the show. Renumber cues, palettes, presets, SFX and master frequencies without breaking cross-references.

  11. 0.6

    Licensing, networking and external control

    • Offline licensing. Offline licences let LMX run without a live internet connection.
    • Configurable Art-Net and sACN output. Enable either network protocol from the console and choose safer broadcast settings.
    • Central external-control mapping. Configure MIDI and keyboard controls from one dedicated place.

  12. 0.5.3

    Remote visualiser and better guidance

    • Standalone remote 3D visualiser. Run the visualiser on another machine, fed over Art-Net and synchronised with the console.
    • Keyboard shortcuts for any command. Map any console command to a key.
    • A command line that teaches you. A revamped help system and far wider command-suggestion coverage make the console easier to learn, and you can store and load looks straight from the cue list.

  13. 0.5.2

    Cue workflow

    • Complete cue management. Store, load, copy, delete and renumber cues directly from the console, including loading a cue into the programmer.
    • MIDI-to-command mapping. Trigger any command from a MIDI control.

  14. 0.5.1

    Targets, presets and the 3D scene

    • Follow spot tracking. Edit XYZ targets in real-time while the show runs with the Target window, ideal for operator-controlled follow spots.
    • Selection-aware presets and layered palettes. Capture exactly the fixtures you selected, then blend multiple palette and preset values together.

  15. 0.5

    Professional output and a richer visualiser

    • Professional output layering. Grand master, group masters and executor pages give you hands-on control over the show.
    • sACN (E1.31) output. Send synchronised network DMX with per-universe controls alongside USB-DMX.
    • A more realistic 3D stage. GDTF-accurate fixtures, textured surfaces, reflections, world-space haze and ambient emitter glow make previs feel more like the room.
    • Shadows! This was harder than we’d hoped! But we now have realistic shadows without impacting visualiser performance.
    • GDTF Share built in. Browse and download fixture definitions directly from the importer.
    • Live / Blind programming. Build looks without changing the stage output.

  16. 0.4

    Layouts, macros and show safety

    • 2D stage layout editor. Arrange a rig on a plan with multi-select, panning, selection boxes, snap-to-grid and venue objects.
    • Macros with loops and conditionals. Record, play back and script repeatable show sequences.
    • iPhone remote-control web UI. Run the show from your phone.
    • Automatic timestamped showfile backups. Protect your work, with configurable blackout and exit looks.
    • Realistic people and truss in 3D. Populate a scene with procedural figures, imported 3D models and truss.

  17. 0.3.3

    Focused programming

    • Highlight, Lowlight, Solo and Mute. Isolate fixtures while programming with a dedicated override layer.
    • Whole-interface scaling. Zoom the console UI in 10% increments.

  18. 0.3.2

    MIDI control surfaces and detailed fixtures

    • Full MIDI control-surface support. Map faders, GO and flash buttons, use encoder mode, and send mapping feedback to the controller.
    • Multi-cell fixture tools. Build realistic emitters with adjustable diameters and automatic layouts.
    • A comprehensive LMX user manual. Learn the full console in-app.

  19. 0.3.1

    Fixture patching and multi-head control

    • Patch Wizard. Set up a rig quickly with a dedicated patching workflow.
    • Multi-head fixture support. Program duplicated attributes across fixture heads together.
    • GDTF import. Import GDTF files and automatically create LMX fixtures based on their DMX capabilities.

  20. 0.3

    Palettes and USB-DMX

    • Palettes. Save and recall named looks with a full palette editor.
    • Configurable USB-DMX output. Connect the console to a serial DMX interface.

  21. 0.2.2

    Reliable cue playback and visual design

    • Reliable GO and premove playback. Out-of-sequence GO now resolves the correct fully-tracked state. Premove moves fixtures while dark in advance of the next cue so that movement is hidden.
    • Gobo slot picker with previews. Choose, validate and preview gobo files directly in the console.
    • A richer 3D scene. Stage enclosure surfaces, ambient lighting, lens flares, target indicators and larger moving-head models.
    • Diagnostics and showfile safety. Inspect the source of every fixture value and DMX byte, use panic and undo, and rely on autosave, backups and showfile recovery.

  22. 0.2.1

    Advanced chase and colour control

    • Advanced chase SFX. Shape step-based effects from dedicated GUI controls.
    • Named colour and gobo wheels. Work with swatches, RGB metadata and multiple wheels per fixture.

  23. 0.2

    Standalone 3D visualiser

    • Standalone 3D viewer. Previsualise volumetric beams, raymarched spotlights, projected gobos and lens flares with mirrored console controls.
    • Natural 3D camera controls. Orbit, pan and pitch around the stage.
    • XYZ target pan/tilt solving. Point fixtures at locations in 3D space.

  24. 0.1.2

    XYZ targets and showfile safety

    • Persistent XYZ targets. Store and recall a resolved 3D target position in cues, the CLI and on-screen display.
    • Showfile dirty-state safeguards. Get warned before losing unsaved work.

  25. 0.1.1

    Groups, faders and cue inspection

    • Base SFX capability. Drive pan / tilt with sine / cosine / triangle / square waves. Layer SFX on top of each other to create complex effects.
    • Group reference mode. Drive cues, faders and SFX from reusable fixture groups.
    • SFX on faders. Load effects onto faders with blend, HTP and intensity modes.
    • Live executor flashes. Release flashes smoothly even in the middle of a fade.
    • Emergency lighting. Configure a scene with a dedicated Emergency command so you can bring up house and stage lights instantly when an emergency demands it.

  26. 0.1

    Initial release

    • Complete graphical and command-line console. Program through patch tables, fixture and cue inspectors, fader banks and a full programmer, or use console-style commands with autocomplete, usage hints and suggestions.
    • Fixture patching and editing. Patch, clone, address, exchange and validate any DMX capability.
    • Tracked cues and cue lists. Build cue stacks with delta tracking, blocks, decimal cue numbers, cue parts, timing and labels.
    • Professional playback and programming layers. Run cue lists with GO, mix cues, presets, palettes, capabilities and effects on faders, and use flash, override, blackout and deterministic layer precedence.
    • Groups, palettes and presets. Select fixtures with reusable groups, save type-scoped palettes and multi-attribute presets, and update referenced looks throughout the show.
    • Effects and chases. Create waveform effects and step-based chases with spread, wings, blocks, phase, envelopes, additive layering and reusable templates.