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Tunnels effect

Rose Window

Rose Window is a tunnel and feedback effect in FRCTL, the browser VJ studio. Puts a mirror inside the feedback loop, so the picture keeps folding back through its own reflection and grows a rose that never settles.

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 Rose Window free All effects

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

A six-fold mandala in blue, violet and peach with a hexagon and six-point star at its centre — Rose Window, default settings

What Rose Window does

Mirrors the frame into equal wedges round the centre and feeds that back into itself every frame, so the tracery keeps growing and rewriting. Petals sets the fold count from two to fourteen, Spin walks fresh picture into the mirror, Grow sends the pattern outward or drains it inward, and Twist curls straight petals into spiral arms.

Using Rose Window

Where it works: Mandala backdrops for a long set, since the rose never settles into one pattern, and symmetrical cover art out of almost any source. Like the other feedback passes, it wants the last slot in the stack.
With the music: The loop ignores the track until you route something. B4 (low mids) on Spin speeds the rewrite through fuller sections, and a beat-triggered Envelope on Grow pushes a ring of tracery out of the centre on each hit.
Starting point: Petals a quarter for five-fold, Spin just past centre, Grow just past centre, Sustain centre, Twist centre, Hue drift near hard left, Glow a quarter.

Controls

Petals: How many times the frame is mirrored around the centre. Two is a simple book fold, up high it is tracery.
Spin: Turn per pass. This is what walks fresh picture into the mirror, so at centre the rose is fixed and either side it keeps rewriting itself.
Grow: Swell or shrink per pass. Above centre the tracery travels out of the middle, below it drains back into it.
Sustain: How long the rose holds. Low is a mirror with a short memory, high stacks dozens of passes into one standing pattern.
Twist: Turn that grows with distance from the centre, which curls straight petals into spiral arms. Centre is none.
Hue drift: Hue bend per pass. Tiny amounts walk the whole wheel over a second of feedback, so the outer petals sit a long way from the inner ones.
Glow: Gain inside the loop. Deepens the colour the rose holds, and trades memory for heat as it climbs.

Pairs well with Rose Window