Optical Illusions played by your song

Safe viewing: some optical illusions can make people feel dizzy, queasy or uneasy, and a few people are sensitive to flashing lights and strong patterns. Every illusion here is drawn within broadcast limits for flashes and regular patterns, and turning Contrast down (Calm) softens any of them further. If one makes you feel unwell, look away and take a break.

Choose one with the Illusion control on the template page, in Classic, in Studio's layer settings, in the Timeline's clip look, in Generate visualizer or on the Layer assets page. Type to search: its name or another name it goes by. The picker groups them by family:

• Motion (still pictures that seem to move, and moving ones that move the wrong way): Peripheral drift and Lilac chaser.
• Size and line (straight lines that look bent, equal lengths and sizes that look different): Fraser spiral.
• Impossible and ambiguous (objects that cannot exist and figures with two answers): Endless stairs.
• Depth and tunnels (flat pictures that seem to pull you in, swell or ripple in depth): Hypnotic spiral and Moiré waves.

• Open the Optical Illusions template
• Every illusion, how it works

Every illusion is drawn in code from its published principle, and nobody's illusion artwork is copied. Each is credited on its entry to the person who described it, with the year.

In November 2026 the illusions became a choice of their own (Optical Illusions 2). The six looks of the first version, one illusion each, are kept under Earlier versions on the template page, and a project made with one keeps its look.

The Illusion: The illusion itself, played the way that shows it best and set on its own lit stage: wheels that seem to turn while they stand still under a studio key light, a phantom that runs round a ring on an even grey, stairs that never end in a moonlit courtyard, an endless spiral. The stage's lights pulse with the kick and swell on a drop, every move lands on a beat, and the truth stays hidden. The Reveal: Call and response: each phrase plays the illusion, then answers with the truth over its last bars, with a caption that says what is really there. The loud parts hold the truth longest: the greys slide together and the wheels are seen to be still, the spiral is shown to be circles, the stairs open into a climb with one hidden drop. The illusion comes back when the song calms. Gallery: The illusion framed on a gallery wall under its own picture light, then the others of its family down the wall. The camera holds on each frame for a phrase and pulls back to move on to the next over its last bars, the room's lights dipping as it goes, with each one's name and year on a plaque and visitors passing below. Op Art Wall: The illusion tiled into a full-frame op art wall in its own colours, one tile at a time lit at full strength and the light stepping to another each bar, a soft key sweeping the wall with the kick, kept within broadcast pattern limits. Peripheral drift becomes one framed panel of mirrored bands, the way the principle was first shown. Projection: The illusion projected on the big screen of a hall, in real 3D: the screen fills most of the frame and lights the room, the projector's beam through drifting dust answers the beat, and the camera cuts between a still close-up and a push-in from medium range on each phrase. Illusions that need a steady eye or a straight-on view get a held camera. Stare Challenge: Look at the dot. A ring fills round it and a countdown in bars runs to the song's drop (longer when the illusion needs it), then on the drop the payoff: the dot jumps and the still wheels lurch, the spiral stops and the still picture swells, the lilac discs are long gone.

Every control is in the editors, labelled, and SW Agent can set each one by its name (for example "switch the illusion to the Fraser spiral", "turn the contrast down" or "set the illusion scene to Gallery"). Settings that a given illusion does not use are hidden while it is chosen. The look's own settings:

• Primary color: Primary color used by the engine palette.
• Secondary color: Secondary color used by the engine palette.
• Background: Background used by the engine palette.
• Opacity: Visualizer opacity.
• Sensitivity: Bounded overall audio response.
• Spectrum range: How much of the 40 Hz to 14 kHz range the visual spans, from the bass up. Lower it to give the bass and mids more of the bars.
• Frequency scale: How the bars are spread across the frequencies. Log spreads them by octave, mel by how pitch is heard, and linear by hertz, which gives most bars to the highs.
• Auto-level: Lifts every part of the spectrum to its own recent range, so quiet highs move as much as loud bass. A note held for several seconds settles lower as it adapts. 0 shows the raw spectrum.
• Primary audio source: Primary audio source.
• Frequency focus: Which part of the spectrum drives this visual; while no explicit audio source is set, the motion envelope follows this selection.
• Burst intensity: Glow and trail swell on sharp hits; 0 keeps bursts off.
• Ambient bed: Prominence of the standing background layer behind the beat-born elements.
• Wake length: How far motion trails stretch behind beat-born travelers; 0 removes the wake.
• Audio contribution: Maximum contribution from the primary audio route.
• Audio dynamics: How much of the band's movement reaches the visual. 1 = full dynamics; 0 holds it at a steady level for a calmer, more constant look.
• Audio attack: Envelope attack in milliseconds.
• Audio release: Envelope release in milliseconds.
• Geometry scale: Geometry scale.
• Motion direction: Rotate the animated visual pass to face this direction; the general background stays fixed.
• Speed: Time-based motion; default major cycle is 6–12 seconds.
• Color mode: Duo palette, primary→secondary gradient, or full rainbow sweep.
• Glow: Glow.
• Global glow: Shared emissive strength across the frame.
• Pulse intensity: Beat pulse scale for spawn, size, and shake.
• Beat response: How hard every engine hits on each detected beat.
• Beat smoothing: How long each beat hit rings out before it settles.
• Beat attack: Seconds for a hit to swell to full. 0 snaps instantly.
• Beat release: Seconds for a hit to fade, overriding Beat smoothing. 0 follows it.
• Beat shake: Frame kick strength on each beat.
• Motion echo: Motion echo.
• Blur: Blur.
• Chromatic aberration: Chromatic aberration.
• Beat sync all: Route beat energy into spawn, shake, pulse, speed, and scale.
• Symmetry and tiling: Reshape the whole picture: mirror it, fold it into a kaleidoscope, or tile it (the plane groups p1, p2, p4m and p6m).
• Kaleidoscope folds: How many mirrored copies go round the kaleidoscope.
• Symmetry angle: Turns the mirror line, or the kaleidoscope, in degrees.
• Kaleidoscope spin: How fast the kaleidoscope turns, in turns per bar of the song (0.25 is once a phrase).
• Tile size: Each tile's size as a share of the frame.
• Tile gap: The gap between tiles, as a share of a tile; it shows the background colour.
• Warp: Bend the whole picture: a twist, a bulge, waves or ripples that move once a bar, a polar unroll, or a fisheye lens.
• Warp amount: How strong the warp is.
• Warp centre: Where the warp is centred in the frame.
• Illusion: Which illusion the look shows: each is drawn from its published principle, and every mode shows it a different way.
• Illusion strength: How strong the effect is: the drift's greys, the Fraser twist, the moiré offset and the chaser's softness.
• Pattern scale: Size and density of the pattern.
• Contrast: Lower it for a calmer, softer pattern. Patterns always stay within broadcast safety limits.
• Motes: Slow motes in front of the illusion that the highs light up.
• Chaser steps: How often the gap moves: on every beat, every eighth or sixteenth note, or faster in the loud sections (auto); never more than eight steps a second.
• Version: Play an earlier version of this visualizer. Current look follows every future update.

Ask for one by name ("make an optical illusion visualizer with the Fraser spiral", "make an endless stairs visualizer for TikTok") and SW Agent builds the project with that illusion already chosen. In an open project it puts the illusion on the look, or changes any of its settings. Assistants connected over MCP can open the editors on any illusion too.

• SW Agent