Shape and symmetry: mirror, kaleidoscope, tiles and warps

Every visualizer has a Shape and symmetry section in Classic and Studio. It reshapes the whole picture after the look has drawn, before blur and glow, so the glow follows the new shape. It works the same on every look, every layer, the preview and the export. With everything at None the picture is exactly what it was without it.

Mirror reflects one half onto the other. Kaleidoscope folds the picture into mirrored wedges around the centre: choose 2 to 24 folds, turn it with Symmetry angle, and make it spin with Kaleidoscope spin, in turns per bar of your song (0.25 is one turn a phrase of 4 bars). The spin follows the song's bars, so the preview and the export turn together, and changing it never makes the picture jump.

The tiles are the classic plane patterns: Tile repeats the whole frame smaller (p1), Half turns turns every other tile round (p2), Square kaleidoscope mirrors a square of the centre on every edge and diagonal (p4m), and Hexagonal kaleidoscope folds it into honeycomb cells (p6m). Tile size sets how big each tile is and Tile gap leaves a gap in the background colour.

Warp bends the picture: Twist whirls it around a point, Bulge swells it, Wave and Ripple ripple it once a bar, Polar unrolls it around the centre, and Fisheye bends it like a wide lens. Warp amount sets how strong it is and Warp centre where it is centred (the middle, an edge or a corner). A warp comes before the symmetry, so a twist bends a kaleidoscope as a whole.

Ask SW Agent or the calculator for "a six-fold kaleidoscope that turns once per phrase" and you get the settings: Kaleidoscope, 6 folds and a spin of 0.25 turns a bar, each checked against its control's range, with how long one turn takes at your song's tempo. Numbers outside a control's range are refused, never quietly changed.

• Open the Calculator
• The calculator and formulas

It draws on your graphics card in one pass where the browser has WebGL2, which is nearly every browser today. Where it does not, it draws with the ordinary canvas: the symmetry exactly, and a warp as a fine mesh that stays within a small fraction of the exact shape. With every control at None it costs nothing.