Animation

The Animation tab of the Lighting section holds real-time shader effects, rendered live on your GPU and synced across every device you own.

Animation is a whole-build mode, and that is the difference from Static: you do not pick an effect per device. One effect drives the whole canvas, and each device displays the part of the picture under its own frame - a wave that starts on your front fans continues across your strips and finishes on your keyboard. Media and Mirror work the same way; only Static assigns a look device by device. Where the frames sit therefore decides what each device shows, which is what LED Maps & Layouts is about.

1. The catalog

Under the preview canvas, effects are listed as live-rendered thumbnails in collapsible category groups:

  • Organic - fluids, fire, and natural texture: Plasma, Fire, Lava Lamp, Watercolor, Ferrofluid, Liquid Chrome, and more.
  • Cosmic - space and sky: Aurora, Starfield, Nebula, Galaxy, Lightning, and more.
  • Geometric - tunnels, lattices, and fractals: Spiral, Kaleidoscope, Wormhole, Mandelbrot, Hex Tunnel, and more.
  • Pattern - waves, gradients, and graphic shapes: Brushstrokes, Matrix, Ripple, Wave, Mesh Gradient, and more.
  • Audio Reactive - effects driven by your music; see Screen & Audio Sync.

Everything that holds still - the flat color fills, gradients, two-tone patterns, and spectrum ramps - belongs to the Static tab instead, so Animation never offers an effect with no motion in it. See Simple Fills & Colors.

Cells can carry a small badge: a monitor icon marks an effect that is also Used by a panel as its background.

2. Applying and tuning an effect

  1. Open Lighting and select the Animation tab.
  2. Click any effect in the browser. It applies to your devices immediately.
  3. Tune it in the Effect Editor dock on the right.

The dock shows, per effect:

  • Four preset slots. Every effect keeps four independent variations; click a slot to switch instantly, and your slider edits save into the selected slot. Reset at the bottom returns the selected slot to its default.
  • A palette ring that sets the effect's hue: drag around the ring to shift colors, or toward the center to recolor the whole effect with one tint.
  • Shared sliders: Speed (bipolar; negative values run the effect in reverse), Saturation, and Contrast, plus Intensity on effects that expose it.
  • Effect-specific sliders such as Density, Zoom, Arms, or Turbulence - each effect brings its own set.

All controls apply live while you drag, on your devices and in the preview. The dock collapses out of the way with the button beside its title if you want the canvas wider.

3. Fullscreen preview

With an Animation effect active, the expand button on the canvas opens the effect in Fullscreen. Arrows on the left and right edges step to the previous or next effect, and the same preset slots and sliders are available in a drawer, so you can audition the whole catalog on your hardware without leaving fullscreen.

4. Pausing

The active mode tab (Animation, Media, or Mirror) carries a small Pause control. It freezes the effect on its current frame, on your devices and in every preview, until you press Resume. Switching modes always starts unpaused.

5. Media mode

The Media tab plays your own content on your lighting:

  1. Select the Media tab and click Import Media.
  2. Pick an image, GIF, or video. Nexus lets you crop it, then converts and stores a copy on your PC (the original file stays where it was).
  3. Click any item in your library to play it on your devices.

The Effect Editor in Media mode offers color post-processing: the palette ring, Saturation, Contrast, and Mirror Horizontal / Mirror Vertical flips.

Note

Brightness is layered: the Master brightness slider at the top of the Effect Editor caps everything, and each device has its own brightness in its LED settings. A device renders at the lower of the two.