Tree of Faces: a tree that holds faces, moved by your song

Tree of Faces grows an old tree in code and lets your song move it. Look into its crown and the gaps between the boughs are faces in profile against the glowing sky, a lobe of its leaves looks out at the night, and a face sleeps in its bark. It is the figure and ground principle the psychologist Edgar Rubin described in 1915 (one edge can belong to either side of it, so the shape between two faces is a vase), grown into a living scene. Every tree and every face is drawn new; nothing is copied from anyone's artwork.

It is its own visualizer, not one of the Optical Illusions: those are patterns that trick the eye, this is a scene that keeps a secret. Open it from its template page, in Classic or Studio, as the look of a Timeline clip, or as a layer over another look. The preview, the still and every export draw the same tree.

• Open the Tree of Faces template

The tree has its own motion system. Its crown sways with the bass and rocks on the groove, once every two beats; a gust crosses it from one side to the other; the kick gives the twigs a push; the hi-hats make the leaves shiver and catch the light. Light runs up the trunk from the roots and out to the twigs on every bar, and on every beat in the loud parts.

The faces follow the song's shape. In the quiet parts they are only hinted at, a gap that might be a face. Through a build they come forward, each phrase a different one leaning in; on the drop they are fully seen, the leaves parting round them and a small light settling at each eye; then they hold through the loud part and recede over a few bars after it. With no beat to follow, everything moves on the loop instead, so a clip loops without a seam.

Each look is a different scene for the tree; the settings below work in every look that has what they change:

• Tree of Faces: One old tree on a moonlit hill, the sky glowing behind its crown so every gap between the boughs reads as light. Two of those gaps are faces in profile turned to each other, a lobe of the crown looks out to the left and a face sleeps in the bark. The crown sways with the bass and rocks on the groove, light runs up the trunk and out to the twigs every bar, fireflies drift round the roots and the mist lies in the valleys; through a build the faces come forward, and on the drop the leaves part round them and a light settles at each eye.
• Four Seasons: The same tree turning through the year with the song's sections: spring blossom, the full summer canopy, autumn leaves falling, then bare winter branches dusted with snow against a pale sky. The faces show differently in each: through the blossom, in the gaps of the summer leaves, in the swirl of the falling leaves and in the bare boughs themselves.
• Whispering Grove: A grove of old trees in a misty wood, moonbeams slanting between them and fireflies in the air. Each tree's crown holds a face, and on the beat they turn to one another as if passing a secret, a faint whisper of light crossing between them; on the drop every face leans in at once.
• Bark Portrait: A close view of an ancient trunk, its bark flowing round knots and ridges, moss and ivy on it and light slanting across. The knots are eyes, a ridge is a nose and a burl a mouth: the face wakes slowly through a build, its lids lifting, and on the drop it is fully seen, a warm light in its eyes, while dust and fireflies glint in the light.
• Sunset Silhouette: The tree in black against a great sunset, the sun low behind its crown and the clouds lit from below. The bright sky between the branches forms faces in profile; birds cross on the phrases, the crown sways on the bass and the sun swells through the sections until the faces stand out whole on the drop.
• Lake Reflection: The tree on the bank of a still lake under the moon, its reflection below. The bass ripples the water and the kicks drop rings into it; the tree itself keeps its secret, but in the reflection its gaps are faces, coming forward on the build and clearest on the drop, with fireflies over the water.

Beside the colours, speed, glow and the other settings every look has (Primary is the key light, the moon or the sun; Secondary the small lights, the fireflies and the light along the branches; Background the night and the tree's shade), the tree has its own, in Classic's look settings, in Studio's layer settings and on a Timeline clip's look:

• 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. From 0 to 1.
• Frame margin: Breathing room kept clear at the frame edges. Audio-driven geometry is soft-limited to fit inside it; geometry scale deliberately is not. From 0 to 0.25.
• Sensitivity: Bounded overall audio response. From 0 to 3.
• 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. From 0.2 to 1.
• 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. Choose Log (by octave), Mel (by ear) and Linear (highs heavy).
• 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. From 0 to 1.
• Primary audio source: Primary audio source. Choose Bass, LowMid, Mid, HighMid, Treble, Rms, Peak, Onset, Beat and Bpm Phase.
• Frequency focus: Which part of the spectrum drives this visual; while no explicit audio source is set, the motion envelope follows this selection. Choose Full Spectrum, Bass Heavy, Mid Focus, Treble Focus, FFT band 1, FFT band 2, FFT band 3, FFT band 4, FFT band 5, FFT band 6, FFT band 7, FFT band 8, FFT band 9, FFT band 10, FFT band 11, FFT band 12, FFT band 13, FFT band 14, FFT band 15, FFT band 16, FFT band 17, FFT band 18, FFT band 19, FFT band 20, FFT band 21, FFT band 22, FFT band 23, FFT band 24, FFT band 25, FFT band 26, FFT band 27, FFT band 28, FFT band 29, FFT band 30, FFT band 31 and FFT band 32.
• Burst intensity: Glow and trail swell on sharp hits; 0 keeps bursts off. From 0 to 3.
• Ambient bed: Prominence of the standing background layer behind the beat-born elements. From 0 to 1.5.
• Wake length: How far motion trails stretch behind beat-born travelers; 0 removes the wake. From 0 to 2.
• Audio contribution: Maximum contribution from the primary audio route. From 0 to 1.
• 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. From 0 to 1.
• Audio attack: Envelope attack in milliseconds. From 0 to 2000.
• Audio release: Envelope release in milliseconds. From 0 to 5000.
• Geometry: Geometry. Choose Circle, Ellipse, Line, Polygon, Star, Rounded Rectangle, Square, Triangle and Soft Glow.
• Geometry scale: Geometry scale. From 0.05 to 8.
• Thickness: Thickness. From 0.1 to 100.
• Symmetry: Repeated geometry symmetry. From 1 to 64.
• Twist: Twist. From -12.566 to 12.566.
• Noise deformation: Noise deformation. From 0 to 1.
• Direction X: Normalized horizontal motion direction. From -1 to 1.
• Direction Y: Normalized vertical motion direction. From -1 to 1.
• Direction Z: Normalized depth motion direction. From -1 to 1.
• Motion direction: Rotate the animated visual pass to face this direction; the general background stays fixed. Choose None, Up, Right, Down and Left.
• Speed: Time-based motion; default major cycle is 6–12 seconds. From 0 to 2.
• Rotation: Slow global rotation for radial/tunnel/bloom structures. From 0 to 2.
• Drag: Drag. From 0 to 1.
• Turbulence: Turbulence. From 0 to 2.
• Color mode: Duo palette, primary→secondary gradient, or full rainbow sweep. Choose Duo, Gradient and Spectrum.
• Glow: Glow. From 0 to 2.
• Global glow: Shared emissive strength across the frame. From 0 to 2.
• Bloom amount: Emissive bloom strength for organic growth engines. From 0 to 2.
• Pulse intensity: Beat pulse scale for spawn, size, and shake. From 0 to 2.
• Beat response: How hard every engine hits on each detected beat. From 0 to 2.
• Beat smoothing: How long each beat hit rings out before it settles. From 0 to 0.9.
• Beat attack: Seconds for a hit to swell to full. 0 snaps instantly. From 0 to 0.5.
• Beat release: Seconds for a hit to fade, overriding Beat smoothing. 0 follows it. From 0 to 1.5.
• Beat shake: Frame kick strength on each beat. From 0 to 2.
• Motion echo: Motion echo. From 0 to 0.97.
• Blur: Blur. From 0 to 40.
• Chromatic aberration: Chromatic aberration. From 0 to 1.
• 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). Choose None, Mirror, Kaleidoscope, Tile (repeat), Tile (half turns), Tile (square kaleidoscope) and Tile (hexagonal kaleidoscope).
• Kaleidoscope folds: How many mirrored copies go round the kaleidoscope. From 2 to 24.
• Symmetry angle: Turns the mirror line, or the kaleidoscope, in degrees. From -90 to 90.
• Kaleidoscope spin: How fast the kaleidoscope turns, in turns per bar of the song (0.25 is once a phrase). From 0 to 2.
• Tile size: Each tile's size as a share of the frame. From 0.1 to 0.9.
• Tile gap: The gap between tiles, as a share of a tile; it shows the background colour. From 0 to 0.25.
• Warp: Bend the whole picture: a twist, a bulge, waves or ripples that move once a bar, a polar unroll, or a fisheye lens. Choose None, Twist, Bulge, Wave, Ripple, Polar and Fisheye.
• Warp amount: How strong the warp is. From 0 to 1.
• Warp centre: Where the warp is centred in the frame. Choose Centre, Top, Bottom, Left, Right, Top Left, Top Right, Bottom Left and Bottom Right.
• Wind: How much wind moves the tree: the gusts that cross its crown, how far it leans with the bass and rocks on the groove, and how much its leaves and the grass shiver. From 0 to 2.
• Faces: How strongly the faces show. They come forward through a build and are fully seen on the drop; 0 leaves only the tree, 2 brings them out even in the quiet parts. From 0 to 2.
• Fireflies: How many fireflies drift round the tree. The hi-hats light a few more and a drop brightens them all. From 0 to 2.
• Branch light: The light that runs from the roots up the trunk and out to the twigs on every bar, and on every beat in the loud sections. 0 turns it off. From 0 to 2.
• Season: Which season the tree is in: turning with the song's sections (spring blossom, the summer canopy, autumn leaves, winter branches) or held in one. The faces show differently in each. Choose With the song's sections, Spring blossom, Summer canopy, Autumn leaves and Winter branches.
• Tree: Another tree grown from another seed: the same number always grows the same tree, with its faces in the same places. From 0 to 99.
• Loop length: Seconds before the gusts, the fireflies, the mist and the leaves' flutter repeat exactly, so a clip loops without a seam. From 4 to 16.
• Title and artist: Show or hide the song title and artist this visualizer draws. Choose Show and Hide.

Nothing in Tree of Faces flashes the whole picture. The sky's swell through the sections, the leaves' glint on the hi-hats and the fireflies' burst on a drop all pass through the same flash limiter, so together they never brighten by a flash more than three times a second, and the scene has no stripes, grids or rings that could flicker.

In the Layers panel each part of a look is its own layer: the sky, the land, the trunk and boughs, the light along the branches, the crown, the faces, the fireflies, the weather, the birds or the water, and the title. Hide the faces to keep only the tree, recolour the crown, or turn the fireflies up. Layer assets offers each of them on its own for every look, to add to any project.

Ask for it by name or by what you see ("make a tree of faces visualizer", "a tree with faces in it for my song", "faces in the trees, at sunset"), and SW Agent builds the project with that look. In an open project, change any of its settings by name: "turn the faces up", "more wind", "set the season to autumn".