kaleidoscope

The frame folded back on itself until it stops being a picture and becomes a pattern. The stargate sequence. The title that blooms instead of fades.

Open the editor Download .cinerune project

kaleidoscope sample frame rendered from the bundled demo project — A real frame exported from the bundled `demo.cinerune` project.

What it’s for

The oldest psychedelic trick in the cabinet, and still one of the most hypnotic: take a wedge of the frame and mirror it around a centre until the whole image becomes a turning mandala. kaleidoscope does exactly the 2001 light-tunnel, the 60s liquid-projection light show, the band-logo bumper that spirals open — N-fold angular symmetry struck off a focal point you can place anywhere in the shot.

Move the focus off-centre and the symmetry stops being a tidy flower and starts to feel unstable, alive, slightly wrong in the good way. A low segment count keeps a recognisable subject inside a stained-glass frame; a high count dissolves it into pure ornament. Rotate the angle over time and the whole thing breathes and turns.

Reach for this when: a moment needs to tip from narrative into trance — a drop, a transformation, a dream — push segments up for full ornament, or hold it at four or six to keep a face still legible behind the mirror.

Where it lives in the app

Effect group Distortion & mirror in the effects tray. It runs as a full-frame geometric pass and can be gated by a mask layer, so you can kaleidoscope a background while a foreground subject stays whole on top of it.

Parameters

Key	Range	Default	Effect
`segments`	2–16	6	Number of mirrored wedges
`angle`	0–360°	0	Rotation of the symmetry
`focusX`	0–100%	50	Symmetry centre X
`focusY`	0–100%	50	Symmetry centre Y

Pairs well with

slow rotate — drift the angle and the mandala turns forever. The shot becomes something to fall into rather than watch.
bloom — the mirrored highlights pile up at the centre and blow out. Pure light-show, the projector running hot.
palette cycle — let the colours march through the symmetry and it’s a 60s oil-wheel projection, alive and impossible to pin down.
radial mask — keep the dead centre sharp and let the kaleidoscope only own the ring around it. The eye has somewhere to rest while the edges spin.

Demo project

The downloadable demo.cinerune is this single effect applied to Cinerune’s bundled code-assembly plate — an amber procedural portrait — with kaleidoscope over it. Drop it into the editor (File → Open from disk…) to tweak parameters live. The frame shown above is exported from the same project.