"Functioning Waterfall" Topic

I'm a fan of Wyloch's Crafting Vids on YouTube. Here's a really neat idea: a waterfall with flowing water.

YouTube link

Probably too much work to be practical, but still pretty cool.

Too loud to be practical, but very cool.

Agreed. Neat tabletop gimmick, but too loud to be practical.

Cool concept, but my problem with it beyond the noise distraction is that real water doesn't "scale" well if that makes sense.

When I look at that water fall next to the miniatures, it doesn't look or feel like a miniature water fall and pools. It still FEELS like full-scale water in the full-scale world. In other words, a dribble of real water falling downwards isn't flowing at the same rate or degree of power that a water fall that size would if it was in scale if that makes sense.

One would think that as a wargamer, having real flowing water on your tabletop would be the ultimate terrain. But it really isn't.

I would think that this would work better if real water was simply used to fill a channel on a board and then left stationary, for example a sealed terrain piece that you could pour water into for a lake or pond.

Or even a river that has its bed painted in a dark color and sealed off at both ends and then filled with water.

If you did hook up some kind of water pump to a river channel, I would think that the effect would be much more convincing if it was flowing slowly.

This is very cool as a concept, but in the end to me it feels like you have a yard/garden/aquarium decoration on your tabletop as opposed to actual miniature terrain.

Holy crap! That's just functioning crazy!

Dan

I would instead propose a wide rotary belt painted or otherwise treated to look like falling water, with the edges hidden by the sides of the "waterfall," and the top hidden just under an overlapping edge of the upper "pool," while the bottom descends into the lower pool.

       ______
       |O|
       | |
       | |
-------|O|

Basically, my idea is a vertical conveyor belt with both ends obscured by fixed terrain. If the edges of the upper pool and lower pools are flexible and the water effect on the belt has some protrusions, the movement could even make both pools appear to ripple as the protrusions rub the pool's material.

I hope my description and crude depiction are clear. Making this would be beyond my skills currently.

Good point about scaling the water. Still, some folks would be willing to overlook it. The noise would remain a problem, though.

Interesting idea, Parsival.