Using third-party modules (FFGL, ISF, etc.)
Posted: Sat May 16, 2015 4:57 pm
There are lots of external modules available that weren't developed by us here at Magic. The two most relevant types are ISF (Interactive Shader Format) and FFGL (FreeFrame 1.5), and you can get more information about them on our resources page: https://magicmusicvisuals.com/resources. They let you add a lot of cool new effects to Magic.
This tutorial isn't about where to find new modules though (since there are too many web sites to keep track of), but rather how to use them in Magic once you've downloaded them.
A good introduction is here in our User's Guide: https://magicmusicvisuals.com/downloads ... uleFolders. But, I'm going to share a bit more information and a few screenshots to clarify.
A few people have discovered that you can get Magic to recognize new modules by copying them into the Magic installation folder. But I don't recommend this solution, because you might have to do it again every time you install a new version of Magic.
The best way to do it is to go into the Help menu and select the "Additional Module Folders" command. You will get a window that looks like this: If you click on the "Add folder" button, you will get a system dialog box that lets you select a folder. I strongly suggest you create a new empty folder somewhere on your computer. I've created one called "D:\ThirdPartyMagicModules", and added it: That's it. Click "Ok", and exit Magic. In your operating system (I'm creating this tutorial on Windows 7), go into the folder you created: Now you can create as many subfolders as you want, as deep as you want, and they will all show up as submenus in Magic (more on that below). You can name them whatever you'd like.
For the sake of this example, I've created a folder called "FFGL" (for my FFGL files), and a folder called "ISF" (for my ISF files): I then copied the relevant files into these folders. For this example, I copied a couple ISF files into the ISF folder (ISF files end in ".fs"): When you're all done copying and organizing your files, start Magic again. Now, when you right-click to bring up the "Add" menu, you will see the folders you created: And that's it! The submenu names will be exactly the names of the folders you created. And you can use your new modules just as you would any other Magic modules.
Note that you don't have to create separate folders for FFGL and ISF -- you can mix and match them however you want. And again, you can create as many folders as you want, for maximum organization.
Keep in mind that third-party modules are only scanned when Magic starts up, so if you make any changes to your third-party modules, you'll have to restart Magic.
I hope that helps. If you have any questions, please feel free to reply.
This tutorial isn't about where to find new modules though (since there are too many web sites to keep track of), but rather how to use them in Magic once you've downloaded them.
A good introduction is here in our User's Guide: https://magicmusicvisuals.com/downloads ... uleFolders. But, I'm going to share a bit more information and a few screenshots to clarify.
A few people have discovered that you can get Magic to recognize new modules by copying them into the Magic installation folder. But I don't recommend this solution, because you might have to do it again every time you install a new version of Magic.
The best way to do it is to go into the Help menu and select the "Additional Module Folders" command. You will get a window that looks like this: If you click on the "Add folder" button, you will get a system dialog box that lets you select a folder. I strongly suggest you create a new empty folder somewhere on your computer. I've created one called "D:\ThirdPartyMagicModules", and added it: That's it. Click "Ok", and exit Magic. In your operating system (I'm creating this tutorial on Windows 7), go into the folder you created: Now you can create as many subfolders as you want, as deep as you want, and they will all show up as submenus in Magic (more on that below). You can name them whatever you'd like.
For the sake of this example, I've created a folder called "FFGL" (for my FFGL files), and a folder called "ISF" (for my ISF files): I then copied the relevant files into these folders. For this example, I copied a couple ISF files into the ISF folder (ISF files end in ".fs"): When you're all done copying and organizing your files, start Magic again. Now, when you right-click to bring up the "Add" menu, you will see the folders you created: And that's it! The submenu names will be exactly the names of the folders you created. And you can use your new modules just as you would any other Magic modules.
Note that you don't have to create separate folders for FFGL and ISF -- you can mix and match them however you want. And again, you can create as many folders as you want, for maximum organization.
Keep in mind that third-party modules are only scanned when Magic starts up, so if you make any changes to your third-party modules, you'll have to restart Magic.
I hope that helps. If you have any questions, please feel free to reply.