Slicing and Advanced mode

Advanced mode

The Advanced toggle sits in the top-right of the Configuration panel (violet button). Flip it on when you need the extras, off when you don't. Your choice sticks for a year.

It unlocks three things:

• Per-row and per-column panel mixing
• Slicing: cutting a too-big screen into pieces that rearrange to fit the canvas
• Editing the theme colors inline

Mixing cabinet sizes in one screen

In simple mode you set columns and rows and every tile is the same cabinet. In Advanced mode each row and each column gets its own dropdown, so one row or column can take a smaller cabinet instead.

What it can be swapped to is constrained, because the grid still has to line up. A row only accepts a cabinet the same pixel width as the main one, and shorter. A column only accepts one the same pixel height, and narrower. A half-height cabinet can fill a row and a half-width cabinet can fill a column. Nothing that would leave the grid ragged is on offer.

Those smaller relatives are declared on the cabinet itself in the panel library, so the dropdowns only show up when the cabinet you picked has one. A cabinet you typed in by hand gets a square half automatically when it's exactly 2:1 or 1:2, and nothing at any other ratio.

Each entry names the cabinet and its pixel size. Rows and columns can be added at the end or removed one at a time, and Reset to all-main puts that axis back to a single cabinet throughout.

Edit the theme colors

With Advanced on, the Appearance section gains an Edit theme block: color pickers for each palette slot, the panel border, the panel text, and the overlay shapes.

Edits belong to the theme you're on, clear when you switch themes, and live in your current session only. See Themes for what each color sets. Saving your own themes to your account is (planned).

Slicing a screen that's too big for the canvas

Sometimes a screen is wider or taller than your canvas. A 3840x200 banner on a 1920x1080 canvas, for example, is twice too wide but has plenty of vertical room to spare.

Slicing cuts that banner into pieces and lets you rearrange the pieces on the canvas. Split cuts it down the middle and stacks the halves flush: the first slice keeps the screen's position, and each one after it lands directly below. From a banner sitting at the top left that's (0, 0) and (0, 200), and the whole thing fits. Move them from there if you want them somewhere else. Each slice keeps its own section of the source screen (start column, end column, start row, end row), so moving a slice doesn't change what content it shows.

HappyMaps flags it when you need this:

Typical case: a wide banner you stack as two halves. A tall totem you lay down as stripes. Anything that's the wrong shape to drop onto the canvas in one piece, but the right size once you cut it up.

How slicing works, step by step

1. Expand the screen you want to slice and open the Splits section.
2. Click Split. HappyMaps suggests slices along sensible panel boundaries.
3. Each slice shows up as a numbered card (Slice 1 of 3, etc.) with its bounds.
4. Tweak start and end columns and rows with the number inputs. Set Start X and Start Y for each slice.
5. Each card carries its own Rotation control. On a sliced screen the screen-level rotation control goes away, because a slice hung turned is a per-slice fact.
6. Need another one? Add slice drops a new one at the next uncovered region.
7. Clear removes all splits and returns to a single screen.

The object's X and Y coordinates are linked to the first slice. Slices 2 and up place themselves wherever you set them. Boundaries show up on the canvas preview so you can see what each slice covers.

Slices are checked both ways. Panels no slice covers get an amber warning, and so do panels covered by two slices at once. The second one usually means a typo in a start or end column: one cabinet would be fed from two places on the canvas, which the screen cannot do.

Slices on the input side

On the HappyMaps canvas, slices live wherever you placed them. On the input side of a Resolume export, all slices of one screen share a single input region: the original screen shape, before you cut it up.

Take the wide banner stacked as two halves. On the canvas, the halves sit on top of each other. On the input composition, they reference one continuous 3840x200 strip. Paint a single source across that strip and Resolume cuts it during playback.

Slices in the PNG exports

Two of the download formats split along the same line, for the same reason.

• Per-object input PNGs ignore slicing. One image per screen, the whole uncut grid at native dimensions. The banner comes out as a single 3840x200 PNG, not two.
• Per-slice output PNGs follow slicing. One image per slice, cropped to that slice's columns and rows. The same banner comes out as two 1920x200 PNGs. A screen with no slices exports as one.

Rotation splits them. The input PNG is a pixel grid to paint content into, so it stays the normal way up whatever angle you hung the screen at. The output PNG turns with the screen and swaps its dimensions, the same as the canvas PNG and the output side of a Resolume export.

See Exports for the full export reference, including how this interacts with anamorphic screens.