GLim

GLim turns GLSL shaders (ISF, Shadertoy, GLSL Sandbox) into FFGL 2 plugins for Resolume 7.21.3+ and ISF files for MadMapper and other ISF hosts. It previews them live, gives every parameter a slider, and can send its output over Spout, Syphon or NDI, under OSC remote control.

Download: the Windows and macOS (Apple Silicon) builds are on the Releases page. Each zip includes the user manual, 18 shaders to start with and the TouchOSC layouts. USER_MANUAL.md covers installing and using GLim.

Made with AI. GLim was built with AI coding tools, Claude Code (by Anthropic) and Google Antigravity. Most of its code, the shaders that come with it and its documentation were written by AI, directed by a person who decided what GLim should do and tested each version on Windows and macOS, in Resolume and MadMapper.

The rest of this page is about running GLim from source.

Running from source

Windows

Needs Python 3.10 (the version GLim is built and tested with). To build plugins you also need CMake and Visual Studio's C++ tools (the free Build Tools are enough).

python -m venv venv
venv\Scripts\pip install -r requirements.txt
venv\Scripts\python src\main_gui.py

GLEW is downloaded on the first plugin build.

macOS

Needs an Apple Silicon Mac with macOS 14 or later, plus Homebrew's Python 3.12 with Tk.

xcode-select --install                          # Apple's compilers
brew install [email protected] [email protected] cmake   # Homebrew: https://brew.sh
/opt/homebrew/bin/python3.12 -m venv venv
venv/bin/pip install -r requirements.txt
venv/bin/python src/main_gui.py

Command line

python -m glim <files or folders> --to ffgl|isf|both|check [--out folder] converts without the GUI. python -m glim --help lists the options.

Tests

venv/bin/python tests/run_corpus.py --isf                          # tests/corpus: 40 shaders
venv/bin/python tests/run_corpus.py --dir tests/fixtures --isf     # feature fixtures
venv/bin/python tests/run_corpus.py --dir original-shaders --isf   # the shaders that ship with GLim

Each shader is converted, compiled and rendered on this computer's GPU (use venv\Scripts\python on Windows). The expected results are OK=38 and STATIC=2 for the corpus (glim_wipeTransition and glim_twoPassBloom don't change over time), OK=6 and STATIC=6 for the fixtures, and OK=18 for original-shaders. tests/corpus/README.md lists where each test shader comes from.

Packaging

pip install pyinstaller, then python compile.py builds dist/GLim.exe or dist/GLim.app and copies the rest of the package next to it. GLim.exe --selftest <shader> <folder> (on macOS, GLim.app/Contents/MacOS/GLim --selftest …) runs a headless check and writes selftest.log.

Layout

Path	What
glim/	Core library: conversion, GLSL and ISF emitters, GPU validation and preview, plugin builder, command line
src/	The GUI (main_gui.py, editor_panel.py) and OSC remote control (osc_remote.py)
templates/ffgl/	The C++ FFGL plugin runtime, driven by a generated ShaderData.h
boilerplates/ffgl/	The Resolume FFGL SDK, vendored (BSD license, see its LICENSE.md)
original-shaders/	The shaders that ship with GLim (CC0)
touchosc/	TouchOSC layouts for remote control, made by tools/build_touchosc.py
tools/	Generators for the TouchOSC layouts, THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.txt (license texts in tools/licenses/) and USER_MANUAL.html
assets/icon/	The app icon; regenerate it with python assets/icon/make_icon.py
assets/social-preview.png	GitHub's social preview and the website's link preview (docs/img/og.jpg), made by tools/make_social_preview.py
tests/	The test runner, test shaders (corpus/) and feature fixtures
docs/	The website, glim.sqrl.biz, served by GitHub Pages. python tools/build_manual.py docs refreshes its copy of the manual, and python tools/render_stills.py its shader stills.

Drag and drop in the GUI uses tkdnd, which comes with the tkinterdnd2 package. Without it, use the + and 📁 buttons.

License

GLim is released under the MIT license. The shaders in original-shaders/ and the test shaders written for GLim are public domain (CC0). GLim includes the NDI® SDK runtime: its terms are at the top of THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.txt, which compile.py writes into dist/. NDI® is a registered trademark of Vizrt NDI AB.

Questions, problems and suggestions: please open an issue.