VisualKO1 · Blender

Shaders in your
node tree.

The VKO1 shader engine, rebuilt as a native Blender addon. A hundred and fifteen GPU shaders, rendered live every frame — no bake, no loop point, just U.time ticking forward forever. Every control keyframable with Blender's own keyframe diamond, right-click and done.

Import a track and every shader beat-syncs off the same bass/mid/treble/energy analysis — no external DSP, Blender's own FFT. Ask Claude to write you a shader — it compiles, previews, and drops it in your file over a local MCP server, live compile-error feedback included.

macOS, Windows and Linux — it's pure Python plus Blender's own gpu module. No compiler, no per-OS build. Same GLSL the Android app and the AE plugin run.

Enginegpu module

Shaders115 built-in

Renderlive, viewport + F12

Audioauto-synced

HostBlender 4.2+

PlatformsMac + Win + Lin

SHADER · VORONOI

GPU MODULE · PYTHON

Native addon · VKO sidebar

Browse. Click. Apply.

A tabbed VKO panel in the Shader Editor and the 3D viewport sidebar — Generators, Packs and your own Custom library, each a thumbnail grid of a real rendered frame. Toggle Live and it renders every frame at your chosen resolution instead of baking a fixed sequence. Effect Controls surfaces Speed / Reactivity / Complexity / Jog / Offset X·Y / Palette Index right there, plus manual Energy/Beat/Bass/Mid/Treble sliders with an Audio Reactive overlay toggle — every one a real Blender property with its own animate-property dot — one click to keyframe, exactly like Location or Scale. Shader Cuts hard-switches which of several shaded objects is visible at the playhead, Constant interpolation, no fade — the VJ move AE gets from stacking effect layers. And Ctrl+F12 just works — no special render command to learn: Live shaders animate in the final render, not just the viewport. Each one is GPU-baked up front when the render starts, with a progress readout while it does.

Blender with the VKO sidebar open on the Packs tab: a Daft Cyber thumbnail grid, Effect Controls with Offset X/Y, and the selected shader rendering live on a boombox model in the viewport.

The VKO sidebar in the 3D viewport — Packs tab, thumbnail grid of real rendered frames, Effect Controls underneath. The shader on the boombox is rendering live, every frame.

Custom shaders · Live editor

Write a shader.
Hit apply.

Drop a .glsl file authored with the vko_main(uv) contract — from the VKO1 Web Graph Editor's Custom Shader export, or a shader pack — into Import Custom Shader. It bakes through the same gpu pipeline as the built-ins and drops onto your selected object.

p0 · Speed1.00

p1 · Reactivity0.80

p2 · Complexity0.50

p3 · Jog0.00

2D snippet.

Write vec4 vko_main(vec2 uv) — that's the whole contract. uv spans 0..1, same as every other VKO host.

Use the U block.

Every live signal lives on U.* — U.time, U.beat, U.bass, U.energy, plus four knobs U.p0–U.p3 wired to the sliders.

Respect the knobs.

Multiply time by U.p0. Scale audio by U.p1. Drive detail with U.p2. Add U.p3 * 0.4 as a jogwheel phase offset (range −3..3).

Mind the dialect.

Blender's GLSL cross-compiler doesn't accept every construct — multi-dimensional array literals (int[10][7](...)) are the one we've hit. Bake errors report the compiler's message, they don't crash the addon.

Import Audio · one click, every shader

Beat-synced.
No DSP install.

Drop in a .wav/.mp3/.m4a file — Blender's own FFT does the analysis, in process, no external tool. Bass, mid, treble, energy and beat all get baked as real F-curves on a hidden object; Beat Phase runs off a plain BPM clock, same as the AE and web players. Hit Sync Audio to All Shaders and every Live/Baked shader plus every native node-group generator wires up at once — the same one analysis drives everything, no per-shader setup, no re-import.

Bass0..1

Low-band envelope (20–250 Hz) — kicks, sub, rumble.

Mid0..1

Mid-band envelope (250–4 kHz) — snare, vocal, lead elements.

Treble0..1

High-band envelope (4–20 kHz) — hats, sparkle, fine detail.

Energy0..1

Full-band envelope — overall loudness, glow, scale.

Beat0..1

Bass rising clearly above its own rolling average — an onset pulse, not a fixed threshold.

Beat Phase0..1

BPM-clock ramp, resets every beat — set BPM once, syncs regardless of the track's actual detected tempo.

Works with no audio.

Every manual slider defaults to 0 — a shader looks complete on U.time alone. Audio is an overlay, never the only driver.

Overlay, not override.

Audio Reactive blends real analysis over your manual value by an Amount slider — lerp(manual, audio, amount) — the hand-set look survives.

Hear it, see it.

Import Audio drops a Sound strip on the timeline too — press Space and the track plays back in sync with the analysis, not just baked numbers you have to trust.

Shader Cuts.

Select every object in a cut group, active = shown next, hit once per cut point. Constant-interpolation keyframes — an instant snap, the VJ hard-cut AE gets from stacked effect layers.

MCP Control · ask an agent

Claude writes
the GLSL.

One toggle starts a local MCP server, loopback-only, nothing reachable from the network — the same design as VKO1 Mac's Claude Control. Connect Claude Code, Cursor, or any MCP client, and it can write a custom shader, see the actual compile error if it's wrong, render a PNG preview to check the result, and apply it to your selected object — without you touching a text editor.

# One line, from the MCP Control section of the VKO panel
$ claude mcp add --transport http vko-blender http://127.0.0.1:8562/mcp

# then just ask:
"Build me a hypnotic audio-reactive tunnel shader and apply it to the selected object"

vko_shader_guideREAD FIRST

Full vko_main(uv) contract, every
U.* uniform, palette call — bundled
in the server, no external docs
an agent has to guess at.

vko_write_shaderCOMPILE

Saves to the Custom library, then
compiles once for real error
feedback — before it ever touches
your scene.

vko_preview_shaderSEE IT

Renders one frame, returns a PNG
image straight in the conversation
— the agent (and you) see the
result before it's inserted.

vko_insert_shaderAPPLY

Applies the shader as the active
mesh's material — baked or Live —
directly in the open file.

Claude writing a shader over MCP — compile-checked, previewed, then inserted into the open file.

Install · macOS + Windows + Linux

One zip.

No installer, no code signing, nothing to build — it's a Python addon. Download the zip, install it from Blender's Add-ons preferences, enable it. In active development: expect the odd rough edge.

⬇ Download VKO Blender v0.8.1 · 45-Day Trial

# In Blender: install the zip directly — don't unzip it first
Edit ▸ Preferences ▸ Add-ons ▸ Install… ▸ pick VKO-Blender-v0.8.1.zip ▸ enable "VKO Blender"

# A VKO tab appears in the N-panel of the 3D Viewport and the Shader Editor.
# Developing on it instead? Symlink the source folder so edits apply on restart:
$ ln -s /path/to/VKO-Blender/addon/vko_blender \
    ~/Library/Application\ Support/Blender/<version>/scripts/addons/vko_blender

Windows / Linux: identical — the same zip installs from the same Add-ons panel.
Works from Blender 4.2+. Pure Python — no compiled dependencies, no per-OS build. Full usage guide ships inside the zip as INSTALL.md.
45-day trial, bound to the machine — the sidebar shows days remaining. After it runs out nothing stops working; rendered shader output just carries a diagonal watermark until you license it.

Get the folder

Clone or copy VKO-Blender/addon/vko_blender — that's the whole addon.

Symlink or copy

Drop it into (or symlink it to) Blender's scripts/addons folder for your Blender version.

Enable it

Preferences ▸ Add-ons, search VKO, check the box. No restart needed.

Open the VKO tab

Shader Editor sidebar (or the 3D viewport sidebar) — click the VKO tab on the right edge.

The VKO panel in Blender — browsing the thumbnail grid, applying a shader, and driving it from Effect Controls.

Shaders in your node tree.

Browse. Click. Apply.

Write a shader.Hit apply.

Beat-synced.No DSP install.

Claude writesthe GLSL.

One zip.

Shaders in your
node tree.

Write a shader.
Hit apply.

Beat-synced.
No DSP install.

Claude writes
the GLSL.