Dither glitch zig zag lines

[adzine]

Hi,

Anyone know how to get these kinds of things happening in magic? - https://www.instagram.com/p/DJOvjGyoFTc/?img_index=1

You see it all the time in modern glitch videos but I have yet to discover how to do it within magic.

Cheers

[Terry Payman]

Looks like the RUTT/ETRA effect. Check out the Rutt/Etra Video Synthesizer for more info on this classic video instrument.

Akascape created a Shadertoy version https://www.shadertoy.com/view/DdXfRj, which can be repackaged as an ISF for use in Magic.
I've successfully done this, with permission. Haven't got time to check and post it now, but let me know if you need help.

Lots of other great glitch and video processing effects from Akascape also on Shadertoy https://www.shadertoy.com/user/Akascape

Edit: You could, of course, ask the Magic AI ISF generator to make a Rutt/Etra effect! I haven't yet tried that. .

[adzine]

Hi,

thanks a lot. That shader looks fantastic. I've never used shaders outside of the defaults before so I don't know how to get it from shadertoy into magic.

Could you help at all?

cheers

[Terry Payman]

I've just discovered that it's not as easy as it used to be to convert Shadertoys!

I knew it's no longer possible to import and convert Shadertoy pages automatically. They had to incorporate bot protection as their server was being overloaded by scrapers used to train LLMs for AI. The upside of this is that the LLMs now know how to code shaders, but the downside is that there's more manual work if you want simply to repackage one for Magic.

When bot access was first blocked to Shadertoy I was able to use LLM AI's to do the Shadertoy to VIDVOX ISF conversion, but that didn't work for me today.

Here's my previous method.
For each of the tabs on the Shadertoy page
- Select all the contents
- Copy
- Paste into a text editor.
- Save the file as <name of the tab>.txt

Upload all the files to an AI, then use a prompt something like the following.
"The uploaded files are copies of the tabs of a Shadertoy shader. Convert this shader to VIDVOX ISF format."

It didn't work today. I tried four different AI providers and none gave usable results. Many tried to understand the functionality of the shader rather than simply converting it.

To cut a long story short I had to guide Claude through the process, using my previous (automatically translated) shader as a reference.
There were several issues that had to be addressed, and Claude included a long history of the session in the comments.

Attached is the result, with apologies that I can't currently suggest a general approach for Shadertoy-ISF conversion.
With Claude's assistance I added a ParallaxAmount and a blur control to the shader.
I suggest making a directory for your own shaders, and copying this file into it. You will then need to add that directory to Magic's search path
Help > Additional Module Folders > Add Folder

Let me know what you think of this! It's actually a huge improvement on my previous version, so thanks for the prompt.
I found the shader works best with headshots such as the example used in Shadertoy.

[adzine]

Hi,

The shader works great in magic but as soon as i opened it, it slowed everything down on my mac and the fan went quite crazy so it doesn’t seem like I can add many additional modules with it.

I’d like to try out some other shaders. Do you know anywhere you can get some .fs files as i’d like to add more in to my projects.

Thanks a lot again

[Sadler]

For a possibly more performant and certainly more flexible Rutt-Etra like effect, you can do most of it in Magic with just a Displace.

Screenshot 2026-07-09 141001.png (338.02 KiB) Viewed 169 times

To test out other shaders: https://editor.isf.video/

[adzine]

Thanks, that looks good but I can’t find a Displace module anywhere in Magic. I can only find v002-CRT-Displacement.

Cheers

[Sadler]

Sorry about that, I've had that VIDVOX Displace ISF for so long, I assumed everyone would have it. Here's a link:
https://editor.isf.video/shaders/5e7a80 ... 18206ded2e

[adzine]

I'm getting some pretty cool stuff playing about with the Displace Module you posted a link to. It's still not quite what I want though.

Cheers

[Magic]

You can use AI directly in Magic to modify ISF modules and get exactly what you want. Watch this tutorial:

[adzine]

You can use AI directly in Magic to modify ISF modules and get exactly what you want. Watch this tutorial:

Good call. I updated today so I’ll give it a try.

Thanks

[Terry Payman]

Apologies for my late reply - I've had a lot of urgent work.

For what it's worth here is my latest Claude-assisted version of Akaskape's shader, which is still Work In Progress when I have time to spare.
I'm currently working on the perspective, which at the moment depends on distance from screen centre giving proportionally greater distortion towards screen edges and corners.

It's far faster than before (nearly 4x on my system), and gives very much cleaner lines among other refinements. Faster speed means less load on your GPU - so room for much more in a project.

A further significant (approx 2x) speed improvement is possible if you follow it with a Resolution module with Width and Height set to half of your project's Graphic Resolution, but (at least at the moment) that will mean readjusting LineNum, Blur and LineWidth (possibly other settings too).

I've kept Claude's working filename for this interim version.

[adzine]

Great, thanks a lot for that. I think your shaders are the closest I’ve got to what I want. I have tried some AI prompts with the best results using Rutt Etra style prompt. All the dither and displace stuff doesn’t really work for me at the moment. I’m thinking I might approach this aesthetic from a different angle.

Thanks a lot for the help.