Newbie

[ozarkboy2]

Hello all!
I'm in my 3rd year using LightORama controllers, and program.

We're up to 4 controllers now, and 10k to 12k lights, and mostly led's.

We made and used our first spiral tree last Christmas season, and we really liked what we made. Even though we only had 4 channels that were free.

For this 2016 Christmas season we've already bought 2 more LOR Controllers, and they are both for the Spiral tree. We're going to use 4 different colors. I'm really having a problem using the LOR Visualizer and trying to draw out a decent 32 channel tree.

I'm really hoping that some of you with way more experience than I could give a hand.

I'm glad I found this forum, I'm really wanting to take our show up to another level.

Thanks in advance.

Bob

[zvacman]

Bob:

Welcome to the forums. I am a second year newbie and probably won't be much help, all I can do is share what I did. There are resources online that enable you to insert a weber tree into LOR, I personally didn't have much luck with that. I ended up assembling my spiral tree in the workshop and connecting it to my controller. Then after assigning channels to it I created a dummy animation sequence to make different effects that I could just copy and paste into real sequences.  I'm certain there are many better ways to do it but this worked for me.

Z

[mcha]

There is a Weber Tree prop to use out there.  Search the forum and you will be able to download it. The second part is how you set up your tree. With the 32 channels and 4 colors, I would look at having two colors alternate going clockwise and two colors alternate going counter-clockwise.  To do this, you would place the first weber tree in Viz and copy it.  Then mirror the copied tree and place it over your original tree.

There are other ways of doing the set-up, but I think this would give you the most freedom to create different effects.

[ozarkboy2]

Wrapping tree in tow different directions is something that I haven't even thought about. Good call!

And now that you say that, I've seen videos that have a nice effect that I've noticed, and I've wondered how they "Did that" And winding in different directions would cover that.

Thanks a lot.

Bob

[George Simmons]

I've attached a 16-channel spiral tree prop for anyone who's interested.  I've also got one for 12 channels.  They're single color, but could very easily be converted/adapted.

No one asked, but that's never stopped me before. So here goes:  IMHO there are far more effective (and much easier) ways to wow people with a spiral tree than a 4-color x 8-channels arrangement.

Spiral trees can/should be a premium-level prop.  (Premium = a prop someone might watch for the entire song without realizing it until the song ends. Or is it just me who does that?)  Spiral trees wow people with their smooth undulating motion.  I haven't actually done the math, but I estimate that sinuous movement all by itself is between 92 to 96 percent of what attracts and mesmerizes a spiral tree viewer in the first place.  With 8 channels you have a 45 degree jump between strings at the ground.  That's a lot, and there's nothing sinuous about it.  Only by obstructing a viewer's vision of the bottom third of the tree, can that jump be easily disguised.  About the only way to smooth out the herky-jerky look is to "spin" the tree fast enough to literally blur a person's vision.  Might get you a "that's cool" every now and then, but never a "WOW!"  

Winding in different directions can give you a different look, but the 8-channel math is the same in either direction.  You could go 16 one way and 16 the other way, I suppose.  Or you could switch colors and go 16 one way and 16 the other.  But I believe winding in two directions doesn't justify the extra resources (lights, channels, extension cords, time spent setting up, time spent sequencing, etc) to achieve such a minimal return.  Chasing the tree in the opposite direction every now and then accomplishes almost the same thing.  IMO, the same concept applies with colors.  There's nothing you can do with four different colors, eight channels each, that I can't totally blow out of the water with 16 channels of LED blue.  That's no knock on anyone's sequencing - it's simple math.  Again, I believe the increase in wow factor, if there even is one, wouldn't come even close to justifying the additional everything it takes to go four colors.  There's gotta be at least 20 things you could do with those extra 16 channels to create more impact than just a few percentage points.

Here's my suggestion:  Use my 16-channel prop, make a quick Vis scene, a quick TSO musical sequence (so you have plenty to work with), set the channels to your favorite color, and have a go of it.  Play around with changing speeds, with filling and draining the tree, spinning 4 adjacent channels as one - have some fun, try some things you haven't thought of before.  When you think you've got a minute or two of something that looks real cool, save it and then delete every other channel in the sequence.  (Just in the Sequence Editor - leave the Vis alone, it will be fine.)  Then play that same song section again.  The difference will show itself quicker than it took to read my advice.

And then in the end, it's your display and you should do whatever you want.

16-ch single color Spiral Tree.lpf

[dgrant]

I created my visualizer, 32 string trees the hard way, one string at a time and mine are spiraled. In my case, I run 16 strings CW and 16 CCW and I do so on two different megatrees. This allows me the ability to make them dance and yet, maintain some small amount of older-fashioned style. We could easily do a spiral tree with pixels and lots of fancy patterns, which do look nice but in my opinion it appears to lose something.