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Light & lasers effect

Light Painting

Light Painting is a neon and laser effect in FRCTL, the browser VJ studio. Holds on to every bright thing that passes, so moving lights draw on the frame the way an open shutter lets them.

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 Light Painting freeAll effects
The untouched demo art: an eye inside a triangle over wavy teal, blue and peach lines
Source
The eye-in-triangle art washed pale, with doubled, embossed-looking lines where held paint has slid sideways
Light Painting, default settings

What Light Painting does

Keeps the brightest value each pixel has held and lets it fade slowly, so anything lit that moves leaves its whole path behind, like a long exposure. On a still, Drift slides the held paint sideways into a pale, doubled relief. Hold sets how long marks last, Catch how bright a thing must be to paint, Heading which way paint travels, and Shift how streaks change colour as they age.

Using Light Painting

Where it works
Footage with moving lights, such as phone torches, stage lasers, a dancer with LEDs or headlights for a Reel. It also turns a performer's movement into ribbons over a set, since only what passes Catch paints.
With the music
It reacts to what moves in the picture, not to the audio. Send B1 kick to Glow so the painting flares over the live picture on each kick, and a slow LFO on Heading swings the streaks round.
Starting point
Hold at three-quarters, Catch at centre, Drift at a quarter, Bleed at a quarter, Shift at centre, Glow at centre, then play footage with a moving light.

Controls

Hold
How long a mark survives once nothing is re-lighting it. Hard right and the exposure never closes.
Catch
How bright something has to be before it leaves a mark. Low paints with the whole frame, high with the highlights only.
Drift
Travel of the held paint. At zero the marks stay where they were made; above it they slide and stretch into streaks.
Heading
Which way that travel goes, all the way round the clock.
Bleed
How much the paint spreads each pass. Low is a hard filament, high blooms every streak into a soft smear.
Shift
Hue turn per pass on the held paint, so a streak changes colour along its length as it ages. Centre holds the colour it was made in.
Glow
Weight of the painting over the live picture.

Pairs well with Light Painting