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Liquid effect

Sludge Falls

Sludge Falls is a liquid video effect in FRCTL, the browser VJ studio. Chunky molten blocks cascading in staggered vertical lanes.

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 Sludge Falls 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 broken into small horizontal block dashes, like a scrambled mosaic — Sludge Falls, default settings

What Sludge Falls does

Chops the frame into a grid and sends chunks of it sliding down lanes at staggered speeds, some lanes fast, some crawling. Inside each chunk the picture snaps toward the lane's centre line, gets dragged and picks up a hot spectrum tint, so the image breaks into short, blocky dashes. Grid sets cell size, Smear the snap and drag, and Heat the molten tint.

Using Sludge Falls

Where it works: Breakdowns and builds where a clean melt is too soft and full glitch is too harsh. The chunks stay on a grid, so it sits well with pixel-art logos and chunky type on covers.
With the music: B1 (kick) on Smear makes each kick snap the chunks harder into their lanes. A beat-synced LFO on Grid, one cycle per bar, swaps chunk size between coarse and fine.
Starting point: Grid a quarter for big chunks, Smear centre, Heat hard left, then bring Heat up once the lanes are moving the way you want.

Controls

Grid: Block grid resolution.
Smear: Vertical smear and snap strength.
Heat: Molten spectrum tint on blocks.
Direction: Which way the blocks cascade.
Speed: Rate of the effect motion. Centre is the authored speed, hard left a tenth of it.

Pairs well with Sludge Falls