Lucinate video synth animates and live-codes visuals on Mac and iOS

From the makers of the utterly indispensable iPad app AUM (among other things), Lucinate is a real-time visual environment for macOS and iOS, based on Apple’s Metal technology. You can approach this as a ready-to-play, Ableton Link and Link Audio-enabled video synth. And when you want to hack or make your own shaders, you can live-code those, too.

VDMX6 gets vision: video tracking, color transfer, background removal

Live Mac visual app VDMX6 is now shipping some of the new hotness the developers promised with the transition to Metal for rendering. Apple’s frameworks unlock a ton of visual tricks, from tracking video to color scopes to background removal.

Peter Kirn - April 11, 2025

ISF’s visual magic for Metal and macOS is now open source

Interactive Shader Format (ISF) code for working with Metal and rendering on macOS, plus an underlying Metal framework that powers live visual app VDMX6, are now free and open source. That’s great news even if you’re just toying around with shaders or working with visuals, as it opens up lots of possibilities to come.

Peter Kirn - March 24, 2025