SuperWashComponent (Wash)
Applies to SuperStage 26H2.6 and later
Wash is for colour fixtures, strobes and audience blinders. It draws no aerial column; instead it forms a bounded glow in front of the head.
1. Why No Column
A wide-angle beam's screen cost is set by the square of length × tan(half angle), not by the angle itself. Drawn as a cone, one 70° fixture can smear across half the screen.
Wash locks both quantities on the component: neither length nor spread follows the fixture's maximum throw distance or its zoom, so a wide-angle fixture cannot push the cost up as it zooms.
Its angle is fixed on the component and does not respond to zoom.
2. Floor Pool
Wash draws no column but it still lights normally: the floor pool comes from the cone light. So a wash fixture still has a normal pool, colour and falloff on the floor.
3. When You Will Meet It
| Situation | Description |
|---|---|
| Building a fixture by hand | Choose Wash (Color / Blinder / Strobe) on the emitter in the fixture definition |
| GDTF import | Groups declared BeamType=Glow/None are assigned Wash automatically — these are aura rings and backplates, and giving them columns would be wrong (a fixture with 25 aura rings would emit 25 beams) |
4. Parameters
Wash's own four parameters sit under B.BeamParameter in the details panel. The same group also carries the beam parameters inherited from the ray beam — Wash does use colour, density and haze noise from those; it only overrides the shape (length and spread) with its own.
| Parameter | Default | Range | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wash Length | 1000 cm | 50 ~ 6000 (slider to 2000) | Beam length. This is the type's performance pressure point — screen cost is proportional to (length × tan half-angle)², so at 70° every extra metre grows the covered area quadratically. A wash fixture does not throw far anyway and ten metres is usually plenty; the longer it gets, the faster the screen area this one fixture covers grows |
| Wash Spread | 70° | 20 ~ 160 | Spread (full angle). Fixed on the component and does not respond to zoom |
| Wash Far Fade | 0.6 | 0 ~ 1 | Far-end fade fraction. Set far higher than a normal beam (0.12) — a ten-metre wide cone cut off hard at the end reads as fake instantly, and the "faint layer of haze" look comes mostly from here |
| Use Ellipsoid Volume | off | — | Switch to an ellipsoid volume. See below |
The length is not taken from the fixture's maximum throw distance. That value is routinely fifty metres, which for a 70° cone means one fixture smearing across the whole screen; locking the length locks the cost.
Zoom, frost and iris are no-ops on Wash — its spread is a property of the model, not a channel.
4.1 Cone or Ellipsoid
The default is a cone: its screen cost is proportional to (length × tan half-angle)², held down by the locked length.
Use Ellipsoid Volume switches to an ellipsoid, which is fully bounded and independent of the spread angle. The trade is the look: a glow around the head rather than something that opens out from the lens. That is why it is off by default — it is the fallback for the day a rig has a thousand wash fixtures and locking the length is no longer enough.
Beam Occlusion has no effect on Wash, the same as for the ray beam.
4.2 Relationship to the Cone Light
Wash keeps its lens mesh and switches the in-house cone light on — the opposite of the ray beam (which strips both because a pixel matrix puts hundreds of emitters on one fixture; wash fixtures are few and large, and the glass at the lens is their most recognisable feature).
The cone light's Outer Cone Angle stays in sync with Wash Spread automatically. All illumination goes through the cone light and creates no UE light source.