Skip to content

Liquid effect

Plasma Tendrils

Plasma Tendrils is a liquid video effect in FRCTL, the browser VJ studio. Fractal lightning paths pull sampled colors into electric veins.

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 Plasma Tendrils 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 crossed by thin crackling veins of cyan, green and violet — Plasma Tendrils, default settings

What Plasma Tendrils does

Two drifting noise fields are compared, and wherever they meet a thin crackling vein forms, like frost or lightning. Along each vein the picture is pulled sideways and overlaid with electric rainbow colour, with extra glow on top. Scale sets how large and spread out the vein network is, Vein the thickness and pull, and Charge the additive glow.

Using Plasma Tendrils

Where it works: High-energy drops and techno sets that want crackle without full glitch. The veins stay thin, so most of the image survives, which helps on artist-name title cards.
With the music: Charge lights the veins, so an Envelope triggered by the beat on it gives a flash of current per hit. B1 (kick) on Vein thickens the tendrils on each kick.
Starting point: Scale a quarter, Vein centre, Charge a quarter, then raise Charge until the veins glow over the image.

Controls

Scale: FBM domain scale for the plasma field.
Vein: Tendril thickness and UV pull strength.
Charge: Additive electric glow on top of the mix.
Speed: Rate of the effect motion. Centre is the authored speed, hard left a tenth of it.

Pairs well with Plasma Tendrils