Pixel Film Studios today introduces Electric — a procedural lightning and energy generator for Final Cut Pro and Motion. Electric builds its bolts from algorithms instead of stock textures, producing thirty-eight distinct shapes that range from a single point-to-point strike to arcing chains, spheres, helixes, and surface-crawling discharges. Every shape is rendered in real time on Metal, animates on its own, and lives in full three dimensions. Electric is $39.95, a one-time purchase with no subscription.
Lightning is hard to fake. Pre-rendered stock elements always look the same on the tenth use as they did on the first — the same flicker, the same fork, the same frame. Electric takes a different approach: it generates the entire discharge procedurally, so no two bolts are identical and every parameter is live. Editors get energy that reacts to their settings instead of a clip that only plays back.
Procedural by Design
Electric is built around a single idea: every shape is born from an algorithm, not a texture. That means infinite variation. Adjust a parameter and the geometry recomputes; scrub the timeline and the bolt evolves frame to frame. Thirty-eight shapes ship in the box, and because each one is generated rather than baked, the same shape never has to repeat. The full library is rendered in real time on Metal, so building and refining a discharge happens at playback speed rather than at render speed.
Thirty-Eight Shapes
Electric's shape library spans simple strikes to complex three-dimensional structures. A few of the foundational forms:
- Bolt — a classic point-to-point strike, with optional spreading sub-bolts that branch off the main discharge.
- Arc Chain — a sequence of waypoints connected by arcing bolt segments, ideal for tracing a path between multiple targets.
- Cage — a full sphere wireframe of latitude and longitude lines, rendered entirely from electricity.
- Helix — a single spiral wrapped around an axis, for coiled, energetic motion.
- Surface — bolts that crawl across the surface of an invisible sphere, like plasma over a Tesla globe.
Beyond these, the library includes recursive, tree-like structures whose branches build from procedural rules — every fork inherits the character of the bolt it grew from.
Glow That Remembers the Physics
Light is what sells an electrical effect, and Electric treats it as a first-class part of the render. A multi-pass Gaussian bloom wraps every bolt in a soft photonic halo, with optional chromatic aberration to split the glow into its color fringes the way a real lens would. The result holds up in both directions — readable against a dark night sky and still distinct when layered over bright titles and graphics.
Alive in Three Dimensions
Electric was built in three dimensions from the first line of code. Position, rotate, and translate every shape in X, Y, and Z, and fly a virtual camera around the bolt — the discharge has real depth, not a flat 2D sprite faking it. Three systems bring it to life:
- Auto Animate — turn it on and the shape evolves, flickers, and breathes on its own. No rigging, no expressions, no keyframes required.
- Light Pulses — send pulses of light traveling down the length of any bolt. Stagger them, trail them, or use Cascade mode to make an entire structure feel alive with sequential energy.
- The Fork System — recursive child branches inherit the character of their parent, each with its own chaos, width, and length, so the branching feels organic instead of mechanical.
"Stock lightning always betrays itself — you see the same bolt twice and the illusion is gone. We wanted energy that an editor could actually shape: change one value and the whole discharge recomputes, in real time, in 3D. Electric isn't a library of clips. It's a generator. Every bolt is new, and every bolt is yours."
— Dave Austin, Founder & CEO, Pixel Film Studios
Built for Professionals
Under the visuals, Electric is engineered to stay out of the way. A cached rendering pipeline survives long sessions and long clips. Geometry is computed in double precision for clean, stable shapes at any scale. A protected XPC service isolates the plugin from the host application, keeping Final Cut Pro and Motion stable no matter how complex the scene becomes. Rendering is Metal-accelerated with 4x MSAA anti-aliasing for crisp edges on every bolt. Electric is engineered to disappear — so the work can come forward.
Native to Final Cut Pro and Motion
Electric installs directly into Final Cut Pro and Motion and appears alongside Apple's built-in tools. Drop it onto the timeline and adjust everything from the inspector — no external application, no routing, no export-and-reimport. Processing is real-time and non-destructive, and the plugin ships as a universal binary for both Apple Silicon and Intel Macs.
Availability and Pricing
Electric is available today at pixelfilmstudios.com for $39.95 — a one-time purchase with no subscription. Every purchase of Electric also includes FCPX Electric at no additional cost. Electric requires Final Cut Pro or Motion on a Mac running a supported version of macOS, and is compatible with both Apple Silicon and Intel. It installs through the PFS Installer app or by manual download from the customer account page.
About Pixel Film Studios
Founded in 2011, Pixel Film Studios is the leading developer of professional visual effects, titles, transitions, and generators built exclusively for Apple Final Cut Pro and Motion. Over the past 14 years, the company has shipped more than 2,000 products and fulfilled millions of orders for video editors, content creators, broadcast designers, and post-production professionals in over 100 countries. Learn more at pixelfilmstudios.com.
Press Contact
Colin Bauer
Director of Communications, Pixel Film Studios
[email protected]