For Wynn Resort’s large three-acre "Lake of Dreams," one of its main attractions, Projected Image Digital supplied and installed a customized version of PixelMAD software to playback low-resolution video across a massive LED surface.
The PixelMAD system controls 24 universes of DMX and 4,012 Color Kinetics C-Splash 2 LED fixtures spread across the base of the lake in a regular grid pattern. When the lake is aerated (via thousands of air pipes meshed across its floor), the C-Splash LED fixtures enable the lake surface to become a giant video screen.
PixelMAD provides eight layers of digital media playback and 1:1 pixel mapping. It is running on a 2.5 GHz dual processor Apple® Mac (all system hardware and software were specified by PID). The software is triggered via a MA Lighting grandMA console. The grandMA also controls more than 100 Martin MAC 2000s, EC2s, Syncrolite 7Ks, Atomic Strobes, over 3,000 Diversitronic strobes and 250 Altman and Hydrel exterior PAR lamps.
Patrick Woodroffe designed the lighting for the Lake of Dreams with his associates, Paul Franklin and Adam Bassett. Woodroffe approached PID in 2004 with his control requirements: an adaptable a DMX triggered system that could be integrated into the lighting control; a control solution that would not limit what the LED surface could do; it also needed to be able to perform anything the Wynn design team might ask of the lighting team in the future.
"Having committed to the idea of a color changing lake we needed to control over 4,000 individual light sources," Woodroffe says. "We tested various options and felt that PixelMAD was the right one for this application. Its ability to manipulate video and other media inputs combined with its own series of built-in effects generation gave us really limitless opportunities of bringing the lake to life. Despite the enormous technical challenges, the system worked well and soon became second nature to our programmers."
PixelMAD also offered more layers that any other product the lighting team considered. "Layers were the key to producing complex effects that could be manipulated as quickly and easily as possible," says Franklin.
Video content has all been specially created for Wynn Resorts. The surface provides sharp definition even though submerged below the water. The lake’s various lightshows are short in duration and link lighting, video, audio, automation, and special effects into a musical theme.
The lighting contractor and installer was PRG Las Vegas, project managed for them by Jim Holladay.