Shader patterns

Patterns that move with the music

Time keeps a pattern moving, Music makes it follow the song, and a few small maths steps (Add, Multiply, Mix, Point, Warp) combine fields into smoke, marble and swirls.

The Screen showing coral and purple smoke-like swirls, and a keyboard below.

1Time and Music

Time counts up, Speed seconds every second. Into a Noise's morph the picture moves on its own. A wire into its speed pushes it on without making it jump.
Music gives what the song is doing: its level, an onset on each new note, where it is in the beat, and a pulse that flashes on every beat. Its Amount sets how strong.

The Patch: Time into Noise's morph, and Music's pulse into the Colour ramp's shift. — Time keeps it moving; Music's pulse steps the colours.

2Add, Multiply and Mix

Module	What it gives
Add	`a + b` plus its offset. Two Noises added are a new field.
Multiply	`a × b × gain`; nothing wired counts as 1. Music's level times a field makes it swell with the song.
Mix	From `a` to `b` by its amount plus what's wired into `by`: two ramps mixed by a Noise paint one palette into another.
Point	The point each pixel is worked out at; Zoom, Turn, X and Y move the picture under it. Its `distance` from the middle into a ramp makes rings.

Cream and teal palettes painted into one another in soft clouds. — **Mix**: two Colour ramps, Dusk and Lagoon, mixed by Octaves of Noise.

Glowing coral rings on dark purple. — **Point**'s `distance` into a Colour ramp with 6 bands: rings.

3Warp: smoke and flowing paint

Warp asks the field wired into field at a point pushed sideways by the field wired into by, so its shapes bend and swirl. Amount, plus what's wired into push, is how far they move. Octaves warped by a slower Octaves looks like smoke; Music's level into push bends it further as the song swells.

The Patch: Time into two Noises' morph, each through Octaves, one into Warp's field and the other into its by, Music's level into Warp's push and its pulse into the Colour ramp's shift, then the Screen. — Warp.

The field that pushes.

Music pushes it further.

Music.

4A pattern of your own

Shader modules can go inside a module of your own. Give it an Input named p and an Output: it becomes a field you can wire like Noise, asked at whatever point arrives at p, with the knobs inside it turned by their paths.

The Patch: Point's distance into a Colour ramp, into the Screen. — Point: the place each pixel is asked at, what a pattern of your own receives at `p`.

Try it

Open Warped and play a few chords: the swirls bend with the sound.
Turn Warp's Amount up for wilder smoke, down to 0 for plain clouds.
Turn Time's Speed up: it flows faster.

Open the example sound: Warped ↗ (opens in a new tab)

Remember

Time keeps a pattern moving; Music gives it the song's level, onsets, beat and pulse.
Add, Multiply and Mix combine fields; Point moves the picture under them.
Warp bends a field by another: smoke, marble, flowing paint.