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Beam for Max

The lighting engine for Cycling '74's Max

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Beam for Max is a fully integrated lighting control solution for Cycling ‘74’s Max. Create audiovisual works with synchronized interaction between light, sound and visuals.

Design your own lighting instruments

Whether you are a musician, VJ, lighting designer, installation artist, data scientist, or even a Christmas lights enthusiast, you can now use the power of Max to work with lighting fixtures in exactly the way you envision.

Interact with lights through custom control interfaces, MIDI, sensors, joysticks, real-time data feeds from web APIs, generative systems, and more.

You now have the ease and convenience you are used to from working with sound and visuals in Max.

Learn more about Cycling ‘74’s Max.
Beam for Max Patch EditorSidebeams patch Raw DMX patch

A fixture-oriented approach

Instead of expecting DMX values for each channel in a DMX universe, Beam for Max implements a more intuitive, fixture-oriented approach to lighting design, based on the workflow used in modern lighting consoles.
  • Control lights with modulation parameters and tag groups, specified in fixture patches and fixture profiles.
  • Use different lighting rigs with fixtures from various manufacturers without making changes to your Max patch.
  • Specify colors for all the fixtures as RGB and let Beam for Max take care of conversion to the different color spaces your fixtures use.
  • Work with raw DMX values when you need to.

Dedicated lighting signal network

Patch lighting as if it’s audio - just like MSP signals, Beam lighting signals pass through their dedicated network of objects and patch cords.
  • Use beam.catch~ to bridge Beam and MSP, beam.matrix for Beam and Jitter integration, and beam.snapshot to convert a Beam signal into a dictionary for processing anywhere else in Max.
  • Objects like beam.op let you perform operations on specific parameters of incoming fixtures while leaving the rest unchanged.
  • To merge multiple lighting signals, simply connect them to the same inlet, or use beam.join for extra control.
Beam for Max patch

Control lights with audio signals

Synchronizing lighting with sound is as simple as connecting a patch cord from an MSP audio signal object to the beam.catch~ object and specifying the lighting parameter you want to control with the incoming audio signal values.
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Create rich motions for multiple fixtures at once using MC objects.
Multichannel audio signals are automatically distributed across the available fixtures.
This makes for a powerful way of designing spatial experiences with sound and light as one.

Pixel mapping using Jitter

Easily map pixels from a shader, video or image source directly to any lighting parameter of your fixtures.

The beam.matrix object accepts a Jitter matrix input and automatically maps each Jitter plane to the specified lighting parameters, distributing the values of cells across the available fixtures.
Beam for Max IO Editor

Flexible connectivity

When it comes to getting DMX in and out of the software, Beam for Max offers great flexibility and versatile routing options.
  • Output any number of DMX universes to Art-Net nodes, a range of supported DMX-USB devices or a CITP visualizer, such as Capture. 

  • Receive any number of Art-Net input universes.
  • Create routings between internal and external sources.
  • Use Beam for Max’s I/O Editor or specify configuration as a Max dictionary.

Fixture profiles
The amount of supported fixtures increases with every update, but in case you are still missing one or more fixture profiles in Beam, you can use the Fixture Editor.‍

SupportWe're here to help. Sign up on our forum, join our Community Discord server, or email us directly. ‍

Buy Beam for Max

Beam for Max

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  • Control lights using Max, MSP, and Jitter
  • Intuitive tag-based modulation control
  • Automatic translation to DMX via fixture profiles
  • RGB, RGBW, and CMY color mixing
  • High-performance lighting signal chain
  • Flexible per-fixture parameter merging
  • Integration with raw DMX
  • DMX out and in via Art-Net and USB interfaces
  • Unlimited number of I/O universes
  • Effortlessly connect to visualizer via CITP
Buy now
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Educational discounts available. Click here for more information.

Looking to control lights with Ableton Live instead?
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