Effects are ready-made “light-motion generators”: a wave, a pulse, a rainbow, a flasher, the circular movement of moving heads. Unlike a chase, which you build step by step yourself, an effect is already programmed — pick a color, click, and it runs. It’s the fastest way to bring a scene to life.
How to launch:
- Open the “Effects” tab — there you’ll find effect cards with icons and descriptions.
- Most effects offer color variants: Red / Green / Blue / White / Random / Custom color. Click the variant you want and the effect starts.
- Click again to turn it off. The “Remove all effects” button extinguishes every running effect at once (without touching scenes and chases).
What’s in the arsenal (the main ones):
| Group | Examples |
|---|---|
| Color | Running wave, Build up, Pulsing, Strobe, Rainbow, Running light, Odd / Even, Police lights, Sparkle, Color fade, Dimmer wave, Flash, Color canon, Two-color wave |
| Themed | Fire 🔥, Water 💧, Disco 🪩, Thunderstorm 🌩️, Aurora 🌌, Sunset 🌅, Breathe 🫧 |
| Head movement | Tilt wave, Pan+Tilt circle, Figure eight, Pan sweep, Fan, Random positions, Tilt sweep, Fly in / out, Searchlight, Scanner 📡, Pendulum 🕰️, Spiral 🌪️, Mirror 🪞, Pan wave ↩️ |
| Light patterns | Meteor ☄️, Theater chase 🎭, Color wipe 🖌️, VU meter 📊 |
| Combined (light + movement) | Chaos 🌀 — the heads spin chaotically in different directions while every fixture shines in a different colour (3 degrees: Smooth / Medium / Wild); Party 🎉, Romance 💗, Show finale 🎆 — ready-made “moods” in one click |
Movement effects work on fixtures with a moving head; color effects work on anything that can do color. So if you’ve selected only static fixtures (PARs, spotlights without movement), the movement effect cards go gray and unavailable — such fixtures have nothing to move. Color and brightness effects stay available, though. Select a “head” — and the movement effects are active again.
Right-clicking an effect opens a menu:
| Item | What it does |
|---|---|
| To favorites (Live) | The effect appears in the «Favorite Effects» block in Live — on the fixture group selected above the fixture list at that moment |
| Save as chase | Turns the effect into a regular chase — you can then edit its steps by hand |
| Settings | The effect’s parameters |
An effect can be saved together with the scene. You launched an effect and you like it — just save the scene (the 💾 button in the bottom-left corner of the visualizer). The effect is remembered with the scene and comes on by itself when the scene is launched — on the same fixtures as at save time, no matter what is selected at that moment. This differs from “Save as chase”: there the effect becomes a separate chase for manual editing, whereas here it simply travels with the scene, as part of it. Deactivating the scene (clicking it again) also turns off the effect saved in it.
An effect in a playlist plays on its own fixture group. As a playlist step, the effect plays on the group chosen for that step (a new step gets the group selected above the fixture list when it is added). The fixture selection during the show doesn’t affect it, and the same effect can be placed as separate steps on different groups — they play at the same time. Details are in 06.01, section “Effect — only on the right fixtures”.
Smooth transitions 〰️
An effect is a set of poses that follow one another. The row above the effect list has a wave button that turns on smooth transitions. With them on (the default), fixtures travel smoothly between poses — circles, waves and orbits move as one motion. With them off, poses switch instantly: the movement steps, but hits and strobes feel sharper.
The switch applies immediately, including to effects that are already running. Accent effects (Nod, Accent, strobes) stay sharp in either position — sharpness is the whole point of them.
Run order ➡️
Running effects (wave, chase, build-up) travel through the fixtures in some order. The drop-down next to the smooth-transitions button controls that order:
| Option | How the effect runs |
|---|---|
| By placement (default) | The way the fixtures stand on stage: rows front to back, left to right within a row. The wave travels along the truss the way the audience sees it |
| By address | By DMX address numbers |
| As selected | In the order you selected the fixtures — this is how you set an arbitrary path, a zigzag for example |
The order is recalculated every time the effect starts, so moving a fixture in the visualizer does not break the picture: move it, and the next start (including a scene that carries this effect) runs correctly again.
Movement aim 🎯
For effects that move the heads you can set where exactly they point. That covers both the “pure” movement effects (circle, orbit, panorama, tilt, searchlight and so on) and the combined “light + movement” ones — Chaos, Party, Romance, Show finale, Accent, Sunrise. Right-click the effect → “Tune” → the “Movement aim” block.
| Method | What you do |
|---|---|
| Stage point | Click the venue plan where the heads should hit; the frame sets how far the effect spreads around it |
| Axis limits | Set the travel limits directly: Pan from … to …, Tilt from … to … |
The angles are worked out for every fixture separately — from its spot on the plan, its rigging height and the way its body is turned, so heads at opposite ends of the truss really meet at one point. The effect’s pattern is preserved: a circle stays a circle, just smaller and around the place you need.
The setting is remembered with the effect (like the mode and the sync) and applies immediately — even to an effect that is already running. A scene saved with this effect plays it back with the same aim.
You don’t need a separate direction setting: a chase already has “forward”, “backward” and “ping-pong” modes.
The PRO Effects Library 🔷
Some effects carry a PRO badge — they are the extended set from the PRO add-on: effects for static fixtures (Neon, Heartbeat, Candles, Snowfall, Matrix, Gradient and more) and for moving heads (Orbit, Snake, Fan wave, Zigzag, Bounce, Starfield and more).
Those cards are visible to everyone and not hidden: the badge tells you at a glance that the effect belongs to the paid pack. You can start one while the PRO add-on is active; otherwise the program says so and changes nothing.
The colour of an effect on fixtures with a colour wheel 🎡
On motorised heads the colour is often chosen not by mixing LEDs but with a colour wheel — a set of fixed glasses. The program picks the nearest wheel position for the effect’s colour and drives the fixture to it, so “Red” on such a head really turns red instead of staying white.