Volute

Volute needs Blender 5.2 LTS or newer and works in both EEVEE and Cycles.

1. Open Edit ▸ Preferences ▸ Add-ons and choose Install from Disk…
2. Pick the downloaded .zip.
3. Enable Volute in the list.

The panel appears in the 3D viewport sidebar — press N and pick the Volute tab.

1. Press N in the viewport and open the Volute tab.
2. Choose a shape and press Add Effect. It is built at the 3D cursor.
3. Switch the viewport to Material Preview — press Z.

The overlay in the bottom-left corner names the shape, the look and the palette, then lists the layers — lit for on, grey for off.

It does two things the sidebar cannot. It stays visible during playback, when Blender stops drawing gizmos altogether — so while an effect is actually moving, this is the only thing still telling you what you are looking at.

And it warns you when a layer is switched on but contributing nothing. A thin volume is only as visible as its density multiplied by its thickness, and it is easy to leave a layer running at a value three orders of magnitude below anything you could see. The overlay says so, and gives you the number.

It can be switched off next to the gizmo toggle.

The shape sets the path and the radius profile. Ring and Portal are closed loops; the rest are open columns.

An effect is described by profile rings along its height. Each ring carries a position, a radius and a twist, and the body interpolates between them. Add a ring and you add a place where the silhouette can change.

Add Ring inserts a new one into the largest gap.

An effect is built from eight layers. Each can be switched off from its own panel header, and each costs what it costs — turning off what you cannot see is the cheapest optimisation available.

These are three separate things on purpose, so any one can be changed without disturbing the other two.

Effect Type

What the layers are. Smoke absorbs light; Fire and Sci-Fi emit it. It drives emission and roughness — and no longer any colour.

Colour Palette

Colours, and nothing else. Density, counts and speeds stay exactly where you left them, so a palette can be tried on any look.

Every layer owns its own colours. Edit them where the layer itself is set up, or all together under All Colours in the Look panel. Change any single colour by hand and the palette name switches to Custom — the name only ever describes what was last written, never a second place the colour lives.

Preset

A complete look: shape, motion, densities, counts and colours. Four ship with the add-on, and you can save your own under Custom Presets — those are stored outside the .blend and are available in every project.

The path carries a row of controllers. Move them in Object Mode and the effect follows; keyframe them and it travels. Nothing fights the keyframes — the deformation is a Hook modifier, which Blender evaluates itself.

Volute edits one effect at a time. When one is finished, press Freeze Effect.

The frozen copy moves into a collection of its own with its own node graph, its own materials and its own path. It keeps animating and no longer responds to the sliders. The workbench is then free for the next one — which is how the three effects at the top of this page ended up in a single scene.

A frozen effect runs no Python at all, so a scene holds as many as your hardware will render.

The Force Field section places Blender's own force fields along the path, so cloth, hair, particle systems and rigid bodies in the scene react to the effect. Simulated Particles adds an emitter matched to the shape and driven by the same fields.