HOW TO MAKE A PINBALL MACHINE: Light Shows

HOW TO MAKE A PINBALL MACHINE: Making Light Shows using Showcreator by Mark Incitti

Designing and coding lightshows can be a horrendously tedious bit of work. Luckily, there's a tool that will automatically create light shows for us!

NOTE: Mark says that the "start hidden" and "finish hidden" controls are for allowing you to leave the shape image showing while other segments are playing. For example, you might make something that moves across and stops, leaving something lit. Then another segment plays and lights something else.

Table of Contents:

0:00 Intro
0:20 The basic apps we'll need
3:43 Visualizing your light placements
10:51 MPF Monitor - Adding Lights
14:57 Getting started with "Showcreator"
19:35 Keyboard shortcuts for the Showcreator
26:42 Global vs isolated animations
27:23 Working with segments, timing and delays
32:10 Example Animations I created
36:02 First Wrap up
38:06 The Power of Audio and Visuals together
40:16 Final, final wrap up!

Links to Resources mentioned in the video:

* Public Files on my Google Drive:

* Pinball Cabinet Fusion 360 file created by and shared with permission by John Marsh

Thanks for watching!!! I hope you found this helpful or interesting - if you did, please like and subscribe and even share this so other pinheads can find this series of videos.

As always, give me some feedback on what you liked and didn't like about this video - if there's anything you'd like me to cover in more detail, lmk!!!

If you haven't already, I challenge you to start building your own pinball machine, cuz why not!?!

[ExpressoMechanicTV]

Fabulous. Cannot wait to see this on the actually playfield!

[robmertens]

These video's are so awesome, i just love the enthousiasm that you show. It keeps me going to finish my build and gives me a ton of new ideas everytime i see your videos....maybe i should stop watching them and finish my homebrew

[MRNBricks]

That’s pretty slick, Steve. Thanks for sharing.

[davidgamboa]

Working on my own homebrew pinball machine retheme right now. I’ve been watching you’re videos and you’ve encouraged me to give it a go. Looking forward to seeing more updates!

[Agent]

This app really brings me back to After Effects - it really is animation and you're right about the center dot. The biggest tip about animation is that you're right - it should dazzle and excite, but when it's used for a purpose - lining up the magic shots in the attract mode, or even during the play, or when you introduce the staircase, or whatever - it's communicating to the player 'shoot here, stupid!' and then rewarding them for following instructions, or if you want to give them options - 'don't shoot there, shoot there' like in a video game where you've got an angel and a demon barking orders, and you don't know which will give you the mega bonus until you try - it's really the basis for setting modes, setting bonuses; dang I wish I had the money to build my own....

If nothing else, I might offer this: if you're not great at setting animations like I am, I'd encourage people to set up spreadsheets for the various modes, and then consider adding various animation patterns to match those modes - again, pointing out specific shots or light shows as both reward and unlockable for doing so.
(You're right that you won't need the center button; there's PLENTY here to play with)

[stefku]

Regarding to speed of animations. You always can change the speed in mpf later on.

[PaulStevensonPinball]

Great overview, thanks for putting this together Steve. I knew this tool existed - years ago Scott Danesi was showing me his Total Nuclear Annihilation and explained how he did his awesome lightshow animations, and he pointed out a really cool one and said it was just a star shape being rotated over the playfield.

My mind was blown. Such an elegant solution for creating large, complex animations. I'd never actually seen it done until now, so I really appreciate the look behind the curtains.

My own solution is more like stop motion animation where you create frames and individually toggle the lights themselves, and you can create fades, adjust speed, and layer lightshows on top of each other with different priorities. I think what I have developed works great for those sequenced target lights, like strobing 3 in a row, but is a pain for any full playfield lightshows. I really need to program my own version of this shape overlay method. I'd especially love to have those concentric circles emanating from a captured ball along with a bass heavy "whoomp" sound effect. Now I feel inspired to do some coding...

[tiboflip]

hi steve Thank you for this great video which will be useful for my project.

[treycsar]

Great video; thanks for demo-ing the great tool! Quick question — any word on when FAST Pinball is going to release their new audio and cabinet boards? I’m almost done with building the cabinet, so am at a place of needing some controller boards, but have been holding off for a while to see if they update their starter kit bundle.

[gauge]

I built a DIY pinball machine but I would like to add a light show. Where do I begin on a budget?

[alexhetherington]

These videos get longer, I'm going to hit play one day and it's going to be 6 hours long 😂