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Liquid effect

Acid Melt

Acid Melt is a liquid video effect in FRCTL, the browser VJ studio. Vertical rainbow drips and viscous image smearing.

Runs live on video, images, a camera or generated art. Stack it with any other effect, and route LFOs, envelopes or any of ten audio bands to its controls so it moves with the music.

Try Acid Melt free All effects

The untouched demo art: an eye inside a triangle over wavy teal, blue and peach lines — Source

The eye-in-triangle illustration recoloured green, magenta and orange, its lines warped and streaked at the bottom — Acid Melt, default settings

What Acid Melt does

Soft, wandering lanes cut the frame lengthways and each one sags and wobbles, smearing the picture along the lane like wet paint. Over it runs a rainbow recolour that swaps the channels and strobes through greens, magentas and orange. Flow sets the sag, Smear adds a second dragged copy, Acid and Tint set the rainbow's strength and start point, and Bands its stripe count.

Using Acid Melt

Where it works: Peak-time drops and poster-style cover art, where the source should stay recognisable but lose its own colours. The lanes are soft noise rather than columns, so it reads as poured paint where Acid Slice reads as broken video.
With the music: An Envelope triggered by the beat on Flow makes each hit slump the lanes and let them recover. For slower movement, send a free-running LFO to Tint so the rainbow creeps round the wheel.
Starting point: Flow at centre, Smear a quarter, Acid three-quarters, Bands hard left for one colour cycling in time, then walk Bands up to add stripes.

Controls

Flow: Drip UV warp and sag strength.
Smear: Secondary smear sample blend.
Acid: Rainbow GBR tint mix strength.
Tint: Rotates the drip rainbow around the wheel.
Bands: How many rainbow stripes the drips fall through. Hard left is one flat colour running in time.
Direction: Which way the paint runs.
Speed: Rate of the effect motion. Centre is the authored speed, hard left a tenth of it.

Pairs well with Acid Melt