Water effect help

[Al Saunders]

Hope everyone is well and getting ready for this year's displays! I wanted an opinion from anyone who has used regular string blue LED lights for a water stream effect. I will be using a regular LOR A/C 16 channel controller and will have an animation sequence running by itself separate from our show. The question I have and am wondering about from others who have done this is, does it look better to do the fade up and fade downs in order (1-16) and start over pretty much when #16 ends or do a more "wave after wave" type of animation. I'm thinking the later would look better but i do want it to look like its flowing. I will be trying to create a stream or river starting near a large tree in my front yard and going downhill in front of the viewers cars. I have 24 strings of 100 blue LEDs and since they are about 33' long I was planning on each of the 16 sections being about 10' long tripled to create the "stream" I'm going for. Since I'll have some extra I may make a small pond or have the first few be thicker then go down in width towards the end. 

I'd appreciate any advice. 🙂

Have a blessed afternoon/evening.

Thanks,

Al

[dibblejr]

Don’t know how much help this will be however I used to be an N scale model railroader.

On my modular track i created water falls and rivers using clear silicone spread out on wax paper. Once dried I would peal it off and lay it wherever it was to be used. 
 

I then used the mini battery operated light strings from hobby lobby to light them up.

They looked really good at night time.

I don’t see why the same can’t be applied at a larger scale.

Best of luck and let us know how it turns out.

JR

 

[Dr_Aplet]

I like this idea.  i can visualize how the light will go through it.  i have a river i am making about 25 feet long this may be a bit much but its worth a try. 

[Dr_Aplet]

1 hour ago, Al Saunders said:

Hope everyone is well and getting ready for this year's displays! I wanted an opinion from anyone who has used regular string blue LED lights for a water stream effect. I will be using a regular LOR A/C 16 channel controller and will have an animation sequence running by itself separate from our show. The question I have and am wondering about from others who have done this is, does it look better to do the fade up and fade downs in order (1-16) and start over pretty much when #16 ends or do a more "wave after wave" type of animation. I'm thinking the later would look better but i do want it to look like its flowing. I will be trying to create a stream or river starting near a large tree in my front yard and going downhill in front of the viewers cars. I have 24 strings of 100 blue LEDs and since they are about 33' long I was planning on each of the 16 sections being about 10' long tripled to create the "stream" I'm going for. Since I'll have some extra I may make a small pond or have the first few be thicker then go down in width towards the end. 

one affect that i like is set all the base light low like 15% and add a single blip of light to say 75% following a pattern down the river.  it will look like shimmering water.  you can enen put the fades in then spike the brightness.  i can post a picture when i get home if needed i was looking at it this morning.  
something like
ch1__-_____-________
ch2_____-____-______
ch3_______-____-____

[dibblejr]

17 minutes ago, Dr_Aplet said:

I like this idea.  i can visualize how the light will go through it.  i have a river i am making about 25 feet long this may be a bit much but its worth a try. 

That’s a lot of silicone LOL

You can also layer one on top of another to resemble rapids

I love water effects. A friend I help here created a spraying effect for his Disney sequences, I am impressed

JR

[Al Saunders]

Hey Guys,

Thanks for the replies and info. JR, I love the idea of the silicone but I'm looking at possibly a total length of about 160 feet! So besides all the work, that amount of silicone would be way too much. Plus then I wouldn't have anywhere to store it. I do a section of sequencing on our Mega Tree and also on two medium trees that are about 8' tall that has kinda of a "Glistening" effect on the tree without using the twinkle or shimmer effects in SE. That is the efefct I'm thinking of trying. 

DR_Aplet, I like the idea of the blip of light. I might try adding that and see how it looks.  

Thanks guys!

Al

[Orville]

Had a neighbor where I used to live years ago who used blue incandescent bulbs and created a beautiful waterfall, river and pond basin, they used green ground stakes and assorted pieces of clear plastic to create the effect.  Not sure how the plastic was mounted, but the plastic was staked to the ground, but also above the blue lights to allow for air-flow around the bulbs and off the plastic.   The lights they used were controlled by some makeshift controller they devised to shimmer the lights and have it look like a flowing river, they also added the sounds of waterfalls and gurgling brooks to the effect.  That was the most awesome, and even breathtaking item I've ever seen in a display anywhere.  All done by his own  DIY innovation.

[Al Saunders]

So I did end up getting this water effect feature done. My wife and I were out there laying down sections of lights. We had the M5 or M6 LED's and I figured we could have them about 5' long and we'd go back and forth 5 1/2 times per section. We had a total length of around 80' and I added a few strings at the top of the water/river and another few strings at the bottom to resemble a lake or pond at both ends. We added some wire deer along the way and we really like the way it turned out. I ended up having a background dimming of 50% then ramp up from 50 to 100. I think I may try and do as Dr_Aplet suggested next year and have the dim be lower and then blip or ramp up quicker to make it look more flowing. People got what we were going for though as we've have several complements on it. And as a bonus, having these lights near the road really light up the cars and people watching the show. I've had a such a great time looking out and seeing kids watch the light dance to the music. When I post some videos on our website I'll add a post/comment to this topic. 

Again, thanks for all the help. Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas! 

Happy New Year! 

Al