Built in Effects

Built-in Effects

xLights includes 57 built-in effects. Click an effect name for full parameter documentation.

Effects A–F

Effect	Description
Effect-Adjust	Post-process brightness, hue, saturation, gamma
Effect-Bars	Moving vertical/horizontal bars with 3D option
Effect-Butterfly	Mathematical butterfly curve animation
Effect-Candle	Realistic flickering flame
Effect-Circles	Expanding/bouncing circles
Effect-ColorWash	Full display color wash with fade options
Effect-Curtain	Theater curtain open/close
Effect-DMX	Raw DMX channel values for fixtures
Effect-Duplicate	Tile/repeat another effect
Effect-Faces	Singing face lip-sync animation
Effect-Fan	Rotating fan blades
Effect-Fill	Progressive edge fill
Effect-Fire	Flame simulation
Effect-Fireworks	Particle burst explosions

Effects G–M

Effect	Description
Effect-Galaxy	Rotating spiral arms
Effect-Garlands	Scrolling decorative garlands
Effect-Glediator	Stream from Glediator .gled file
Effect-Guitar	Guitar chord visualization
Effect-Kaleidoscope	Symmetric mirror patterns
Effect-Life	Conway's Game of Life
Effect-Lightning	Branching lightning bolts
Effect-Lines	Animated directional lines
Effect-Liquid	Physics fluid simulation
Effect-Marquee	Scrolling border lights
Effect-Meteors	Falling meteor trails
Effect-Morph	Stroke animation between two endpoints
Effect-MovingHead	Intelligent fixture control
Effect-Music	Frequency spectrum visualizer

Effects N–S

Effect	Description
Effect-Off	Black / transparent off
Effect-On	Solid color with fade/shimmer
Effect-Piano	MIDI piano keyboard visualization
Effect-Pictures	Image/GIF file display
Effect-Pinwheel	Spinning pinwheel
Effect-Plasma	Animated color noise
Effect-Ripple	Expanding geometric rings
Effect-Servo	DMX servo motor control
Effect-Shader	GLSL fragment shader
Effect-Shape	Moving animated shapes
Effect-Shimmer	Rapid color blink
Effect-Shockwave	Single expanding ring
Effect-SingleStrand	Chase patterns on strands
Effect-Sketch	User-drawn path animation
Effect-Snowflakes	Falling snowflakes
Effect-Snowstorm	Swirling snowstorm
Effect-Spirals	Rotating spiral bands
Effect-Spirograph	Mathematical spirograph curves
Effect-State	Named state transitions
Effect-Strobe	Rapid strobe flashing

Effects T–W

Effect	Description
Effect-Tendril	Organic wandering tendril
Effect-Text	Animated text display
Effect-Tree	Christmas tree spiral wrap
Effect-Twinkle	Random pixel twinkling
Effect-VUMeter	Advanced audio visualization
Effect-Video	Video file playback
Effect-Warp	Dissolve/warp transitions
Effect-Wave	Animated waveforms

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Common to All Effects

Every effect shares these common controls found in the layer settings panel:

• Color Palette — up to 8 colors used by the effect
• Speed — many effects expose a per-effect speed; most also respect the global render speed
• Layer Blending — how this layer combines with layers below (Normal, Additive, Subtractive, etc.)
• Brightness — overall layer brightness
• Value Curves — any parameter can be automated with a value curve over the effect duration

See Sequencer-Tab for how to add and edit effects on the timeline.

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Last updated: 2026-06-30