Beam

The Preset popup stamps one of 30 factory looks onto the dials — everything except geometry, the output Mode and the seeds, which are never touched, so you can audition looks from Ion Torch to Royal Lance without your endpoints moving. The popup reads Custom the moment you change anything, which is the intended workflow: preset first, then make it yours.

Randomize is a curated re-roll — a new coherent look (colors, body, motion) that keeps your geometry. New Seeds is narrower still: it re-rolls only the distortion noise, for when the look is right but the churn pattern lands badly on your shot. Both are buttons, not dice you have to undo — every roll is still just dial values you can inspect and edit.

Dump Look is a utility for building factory presets; it stays hidden in a normal install and you can ignore it.

Render Version decides how a beam that follows a mask is drawn. 1.3 (Continuous Path Glow) is the current method and the default for new instances: the glow along a Path or Trace All Masks beam is one continuous blur of the whole stroke, so there are no seams at corners, no straight lines running out of the mask edges and no lines between letters. 1.2 (Original) is the earlier method, and projects saved before 1.3 existed open on it so they render exactly as they did. Switch an older project to 1.3 when you want the seamless glow. A point-to-point beam looks the same either way.

Beam folds its whole surface into four macro dials, and on an effect with more than a hundred controls they earn their keep. Master Amount multiplies the three intensity dials at once (Core Intensity, Glow Intensity, Head Glow) — one slider to fade a beam in without disturbing the balance between core and body. Master Scale multiplies the size dials (Core Size, Glow Spread, Halo Size, Head Size, and Breakup Size), so a look built at 1080p scales to a 4K comp with one value. Master Speed multiplies every rate at once — Flicker Speed, Pulse Speed, Breakup Evolution, and both distortion stacks’ wind and evolution — which is how you slow a preset’s whole personality down for slow motion. Master Complexity multiplies the two distortion stacks’ octave counts: down for smoother, cheaper noise, up for extra filigree.

As everywhere in the suite: 100 is neutral, geometry and seeds are never touched, and you should ride either a Master dial or its folded dials — animating both multiplies twice.

Where the beam goes, by one of three routes. The default is the two endpoints: drag Core Start and Core End in the comp and you have the classic point-to-point laser — animate them for sweeps and hits. Assign a mask to Path and the beam bends along it instead, arc length and all. Or check Trace All Masks and one Beam instance runs every mask on the layer in sequence — the text write-on route, where a title converted to masks becomes one continuous stroke.

Start Offset and End Offset window the drawn segment as percentages of the full arc. They’re the animation surface for the whole geometry system: keyframe End Offset 0→100 for a write-on, or animate a narrow window (say Start Offset = 80 trailing End Offset = 100) for a traveling bolt that carries its taper and head with it. With Trace All Masks on, the offsets run the concatenated length of all masks, so one dial writes a whole word letter-by-letter.

Start Roundness and End Roundness shape the stroke’s end caps, from square cut to full round. When tracing multiple masks, three dials keep letters from looking cloned: Mask Randomization de-syncs per-mask variation, Mask Evolution advances it as an angle you can animate, and Mask Seed re-rolls which mask gets which variation.

Use Mask Opacity lets each traced mask’s own Mask Opacity fade its part of the beam, core and glow together. Keyframe one mask’s opacity down and that mask’s stroke fades on its own while the rest of the word stays lit. It’s off by default, so the masks’ opacity is ignored until you turn it on.

The hot center strip — the part that reads as the emitter itself. Core Size sets its width in pixels: 2–6 is a laser, 10–20 a thick plasma bar. Core Softness feathers its edge, and Core Intensity drives how hard it burns. Core Color stays white for the classic hot-white center — the glow body carries the hue — and gets tinted only for deliberately stylized beams.

The taper block turns a uniform strip into a projectile silhouette. Start Size and End Size scale the width at each end (as percent of Core Size), Taper Curve bends the transition between them — above 100 the width hugs the head longer then falls away fast, the tracer-round profile — and Tail Fade dims the trailing end on top of the width taper.

Head Glow and Head Size build the nose: a bright cap at the leading end of the drawn segment. On a static beam it reads as the contact point; on an animated draw range it becomes the comet head that carries the shot. Head Glow 85–135 matches a hot game-style bolt nose. Because the head rides the drawn end, everything here composes with the Start Offset / End Offset window from the Geometry group — a narrow window plus taper plus head is the complete traveling-projectile recipe.

Trail breakup. Trail Breakup burns the beam’s tail into islands, tips first: the head stays whole and the far end dissolves. The amount is how far from the tail end the burn reaches, so low values break up just the tip and 100 reaches the whole beam; at 0 it’s off and the beam renders exactly as before. Breakup Size is the island size in pixels. Glow Breakup sets how deep the holes in the glow go: the glow close to the core follows the core’s islands, while the wide glow dims smoothly. Breakup Evolution makes the islands morph over time, and 0 holds them still. The nose from Head Glow never erodes, so a burning-out bolt keeps a solid head. On a traced word each letter breaks up along its own length, with the islands flowing across letters without seams. Cinder Trail and Shattered Lance start with breakup on.

The colored energy body around the core — where a beam’s character lives. Glow Color carries the look; the core stays white on top of it. Glow Intensity drives the body’s overall energy, and since it’s a percent dial with 100 neutral, it’s the natural handle for fading the body against the core.

Glow Spread is the most consequential dial in the group: it widens or narrows all four underlying glow strips together, so it sets how far the body reaches from the core. Low values pull the body in tight — a contained, liquid-neon read; high values push it outward — diffuse, atmospheric, dangerous. The default 0.48 is the balanced middle. Glow Size Mult scales the same four footprints and multiplies with Glow Spread; the difference is that Master Scale rides Glow Spread along with the other size dials, while Glow Size Mult stays where you set it. Glow Pre Gamma shapes the body’s response curve before it lands — below 1 fattens the mids for a denser body, above 1 thins it toward the core.

These four dials are macros over the Glow > Glow Layers strips below. Sculpt there when you need a falloff profile the macros can’t reach; stay here for everything else.

The four strips that sum into the beam’s body, exposed individually: an intensity and a size for each, from Glow Layer 1 Intensity / Glow Layer 1 Size (the widest, softest strip) down to Glow Layer 4 Intensity / Glow Layer 4 Size (the tightest, hugging the core). The factory defaults descend in both — that geometric ladder is what makes the default beam falloff read photographic.

Reach in here for custom profiles the top-level dials can’t express. A hollow “tube light” body: drop Glow Layer 4 Intensity and Glow Layer 3 Intensity low (their Glow Layer 3 Size footprint can stay put) and let layers 1–2 carry a wide shell. A hard two-tier sci-fi read: push Glow Layer 2 Intensity and Glow Layer 2 Size up and zero out layer 1 so the body ends abruptly. Remember the top-level Glow Spread and Glow Size Mult keep scaling everything you set here — sculpt the layers first, then ride the macros.

Color stops along the beam. The Gradient popup picks the mapping: Along Beam runs the stops down the arc length — on a traced word, the letters wear the colors in sequence — while Linear (Angle) projects them across a screen-space axis set by Gradient Angle, ignoring the beam’s own direction. Off leaves Glow Color alone to carry the body.

Gradient Stops chooses 2, 3, or 4 stops; each stop is a color and a position pair — Gradient Color 1 at Gradient Position 1, Gradient Color 2 at Gradient Position 2, and so on up the count. Gradient Start and Gradient End remap where along the beam the ramp begins and ends, so a two-stop ramp can occupy just the middle third.

The motion dials make it a chase. Gradient Offset is the animatable phase — one full turn slides the ramp one cycle, so keyframing it runs color down the beam continuously. Gradient Cycles repeats the ramp along the length, and Gradient Wrap decides what happens past its ends: Clamp holds the last color, Repeat gives hard chase seams by design, Mirror ping-pongs smoothly.

Three switches tie the group to the rest of the effect. Gradient Anchor maps the ramp to the full mask Path or just the Drawn Segment — with an animated draw range those are very different reads. Per Mask Gradient restarts the ramp on every traced mask, giving each letter the full color story instead of one story across the word. And Tint Core pulls the core’s mix onto the gradient too; leave it off to keep the hot white center.

A wide, soft ambience layer around the whole beam — the light the beam throws into the room, rather than the beam itself. Halo Intensity defaults to 0, so the layer is silent until you ask for it; Halo Size sets how far it reaches. A touch of halo is what sits a beam into a scene: it bridges the hard energy body and the plate around it. Push it high with a dim core and the effect inverts into a searchlight-through-fog read.

A final trim pass on the finished beam, applied after every layer has summed. Gamma bends the response curve — below 1 thickens the mids and makes the body read denser, above 1 pulls it toward a thin, hot line. Brightness is a straight output multiplier, useful as a last match against the plate without re-balancing the intensity dials. Saturation defaults slightly rich at 1.15; pull it under 1 to sit a beam into desaturated, graded footage, push it up for full synthwave. These three exist so you can finish the beam here instead of round-tripping through the upstream color dials.

Time behavior in three blocks: flicker, pulse, and motion blur. Flicker Intensity modulates the beam’s energy with seeded noise — 30–120 is the working zone for live energy crackle, and past 200 it reads as electrical failure. Flicker Speed sets the modulation rate. Because the noise is seeded, the flicker is deterministic: same frames, same flicker, every render.

The pulse is a periodic wave running along the beam. Pulse Intensity brings it up, Pulse Speed sets its travel rate, Pulse Width widens each traveling band, and Pulse Sharpness shapes the wavefront from soft swell to hard-edged pulse. Pulse Phase is the animatable handle: an angle dial where keyframing full turns drives the wave by hand — retime it, ease it, sync it to a hit.

Motion Blur covers the beam’s own animation (endpoints, draw range, distortion churn): Comp Settings honors the comp’s shutter like any moving layer, Custom unlocks Shutter Angle (Custom) and Shutter Phase (Custom) for a per-effect shutter, and Blur Samples trades smoothness against render time. Off is the right answer when the beam is static and the plate is doing the moving.

Loop (frames) makes the beam’s animation repeat seamlessly over that many frames: frame 0 and frame N render identically, so the comp can loop forever without a visible jump. At 0, the default, it’s off. To close the loop, the noise motion crossfades over the last quarter of each cycle, and the pulse is rounded to a whole number of cycles per loop. Presets, Randomize and the Master dials never change it.

A coherent-noise domain warp on the glow body — the difference between a clean tube of light and something alive. Glow Distortion Amount brings it in: 20–60 electrifies a beam while keeping its silhouette; past 100 the body starts shredding into weather. Glow Distortion Type picks the noise character — Smoke billows, Fluid streams, Tendril pulls stringy filaments off the body.

The shape dials: Glow Distortion Scale sets the feature size of the warp (small = fizz, large = slow fat waves), Glow Distortion Contrast hardens the noise from smooth undulation toward sharp cells, Glow Distortion Complexity adds octaves of finer detail on top, and Glow Distortion Aspect stretches the pattern along or across the beam — high aspect gives wind-combed streaks.

Motion is two independent clocks. Glow Distortion Wind Speed translates the noise field through the beam (direction set by Glow Distortion Wind Direction), while Glow Distortion Evolution churns the pattern in place — wind without evolution reads as debris flying past, evolution without wind as boiling. Glow Distortion Evolution Offset is the animatable phase for driving the churn by hand. Glow Distortion Seed re-rolls the field, and Glow Distortion Motion Blur smears the noise-field motion itself for fast wind that would otherwise strobe.

The same distortion stack again — Core Distortion Amount, Core Distortion Type (Smoke / Fluid / Tendril), Core Distortion Scale, Core Distortion Contrast, Core Distortion Complexity, Core Distortion Aspect, Core Distortion Wind Speed with Core Distortion Wind Direction, Core Distortion Evolution with its animatable Core Distortion Evolution Offset, Core Distortion Seed, and Core Distortion Motion Blur — but applied to the hot core strip, and seeded independently so core and body never move in lockstep.

That independence is the point. A lightning-like arc is core distortion with the glow left clean; unstable plasma is both stacks churning at different scales; a Tesla-style filament is high Core Distortion Amount with Core Distortion Contrast pushed hard while the body stays soft around it. The factory defaults keep the core’s noise slightly smaller and slower than the glow’s — when you dial your own, keeping the two stacks’ scales and speeds different is what keeps the beam looking like physics instead of one texture pasted twice.

How the beam leaves the effect. Mode picks the output: Beam Only renders the beam on its own alpha (the compositing workhorse — put the beam on its own layer and blend in the comp), On Black gives an opaque plate for pre-render passes, and Add / Screen composite over the layer’s own content directly for one-layer setups.

Edge Fade softens the beam as it approaches the frame boundary, killing the hard clip line a beam otherwise shows when it runs off screen — 40 is a typical value on a full-frame shot. Invert Masks reverses traced mask direction, so write-ons and gradients sweep from the other end without re-drawing anything.

The Alpha popup sets the matte policy for Beam Only work: Auto builds alpha from the beam’s energy, Luma uses output luminance, Core Only mattes just the hot strip (glow becomes additive spill for the comp to place), and Opaque fills the frame. Alpha Boost thickens whichever matte you chose — raise it when a soft beam disappears against bright plates in an alpha-driven pipeline.