U4 RECURSION 1.9.0 / FRACTAL + BEAM + FIELD

V1.9 WORKSPACES
Fractal keeps the 1.8 sound-driven engine. Beam adds music-guided object and
song-field drawing. Field adds ambient matter and object/story formation,
with the six particle laws, identity colors, view zoom and pointer tug.
The plugin listens to its FL mixer track; load a song into FL, not this panel.
The song clock follows FL's transport when the host supplies it. Beam/Field
settings and the chosen workspace save with the FL project.

Accurate Stereo XY, Phosphor XY, Prism XY and Chaos XY require paired source
samples. They remain available on the standalone website and are not exposed
in this VST release. The plugin does not synthesize fake XY from spectrum data.
The acid current preset pushes cubic Julia geometry, flowing refraction, entwined ribbons, colored branch subtrees and longer trails. It supplies a lime/fuchsia/cyan palette when no custom palette is active; an enabled custom palette stays yours. Optics > liquid refraction controls the flowing spectral split.

SIGNAL FLOW

WINDOWS / FL STUDIO
1. Save your song and close FL Studio.
2. Extract the ZIP. Keep a backup of any older U4 Recursion.vst3 folder outside your plugin scan folders.
3. Copy the complete U4 Recursion.vst3 folder into C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3\
4. For a first install, use FL Studio > Options > Manage plugins > Find installed plugins (Verify plugins on).
5. Add U4 Recursion as a mixer EFFECT. Master follows the whole song; an individual track follows that track.

Keep the Contents, Resources and x86_64-win folders intact. The plugin identity and original five automation IDs are unchanged; eleven more parameters are appended. Existing projects load the replacement. Windows may request administrator permission when copying into Program Files.

Requires Windows 10/11 x64, a 64-bit VST3 host, GPU acceleration and Microsoft Edge WebView2 Evergreen Runtime:
https://developer.microsoft.com/microsoft-edge/webview2/#download-section

ICON
The recursive iris appears in the website tab, saved site shortcuts and the plugin panel. The Windows binary also contains the multi-size icon; the bundle includes a custom folder icon. FL controls its own wrapper and application icons.

LEADR THEME
The compact pedal face has a preview screen and a real hold/release footswitch. Green means released; amber means held. Four sound controls appear first: drive, motion, detail and color. Advanced opens the complete panel. These reuse the existing parameters and FL automation. Image and colors remain beside the transport.
Choose theme > leadr. Red chassis, green screens, pixel headings, ivory dials and red needles cover the control bank, seed browser, color desk and help. Light/dark is independent. The theme changes controls only; audio and saved scenes keep their settings. This is an independently made visual theme for U4 Recursion, not the LEADR synth. Press Start 2P font license is included in Contents/Resources/ui/fonts.

FINISH PASS
Acid current and signal flow now weave open contours through the recursive structure. Geometry > woven currents controls the strands; Optics > surface light adds contour lighting without moving the camera. Both still follow accumulated sound action and hold through silence. This is surface shading, not a 3D mesh.
The color desk includes electric dusk, acid garden, deep water, solar flare and silver ink palettes. Undo palette restores your colors before the last palette selection. Hue/saturation choices survive turning a color black or gray. Older saved scenes retain their existing look.

COLOR DESK
Open Optics > color desk. Choose body, fine detail, highlights, inner core, glow, echoes, background, ribbons, one of five root branches, or one of six source-image hue ranges. Each has a hue/saturation wheel, brightness slider, hex entry and system picker. Pick from fractal copies a visible color into the selected slot; Escape cancels. Screen dropper appears when supported. Branch color and image recolor blend independently. Use these colors switches the palette on or off; reset restores the original colors. Colors save with scene settings and FL projects, and carry across presets. Overlapping branches blend their colors; these are structural groups, not individually addressable infinite descendants.

ACID CURRENT
The acid current preset pushes cubic Julia geometry, flowing refraction, entwined ribbons, colored branch subtrees and longer trails. It supplies a lime/fuchsia/cyan palette when no custom palette is active; an enabled custom palette stays yours. Optics > liquid refraction controls the flowing spectral split.

SIGNAL FLOW
Choose signal flow in the preset menu for local curling, ribbon contours and advection trails inspired by the original Xbox visualizer. Geometry > fluid motion and ribbon filaments, plus Feedback > flow trails, adjust the effect. Mouse pan/zoom and steady orientation remain independent. Persistent sound phases drive motion in the VST; silence and Hold stop the flow. The website evolves autonomously until sound is attached. Old saved scenes open with the new motion controls at zero. These new scene controls save with the FL project but are not new host automation parameters.

AERO BLOOM
Choose aero bloom in the preset selector or shape bank. This procedural aqua-and-lime seed grows glossy spheres and logarithmic curls through the existing image fractal, including sound-driven orbital evolution. Pair it with the frutiger aero theme in the theme menu for sky-blue gloss and green accents. The preset and panel theme can be selected independently. Nine etched seeds remain in the separate seed ZIP.

LIGHT AND DARK
Use light / dark beside the theme menu. Every theme has both appearances, including custom image. The choice is remembered on this device and applies to the controls, menus and dialogs. Custom colors adapt to the chosen brightness without changing the uploaded image or saved palette. The fractal and exported captures keep their own colors. The afterhours preview controls share the preference on the website.

THEMES
Use the theme menu at the top: original etched (default), ink ritual, ultraviolet, botanical, frutiger aero, workstation or custom image. Original etched restores the original organic panel and button positions. Ink ritual adds paper, crosshatching and spiral dials; ultraviolet uses neon etching. Botanical adds herbarium panels, fern linework and green growth-ring dials.
Custom image opens the theme editor. Choose a picture to pick its colors, then adjust six colors, panel opacity, image visibility/scale/position, hatching, dial engraving, corners and lettering. Images stay on your device. Choices are remembered locally in this browser or plugin. Themes change only the controls, never the fractal, audio response, saved scenes or captures. Different browsers and the VST keep their own preferences.

PANEL
Original etched opens with the original control positions. Other themes use the compact command strip for seeds, PNG captures, saved settings and help. Switching back restores the original positions. The controls and audio-driven orbital engine are preserved.

PLAY
The VST has its own fixed control panel. The six main music dials stay visible underneath the image. Source, geometry, feedback, optics, voices and output live in the side bank. Shape bank below the image (or seeds in the command strip) opens the nine etched neon seeds plus aero bloom. The top preset selector changes fractal families; Source also has independent mode and family controls.

Drag dials up/down; Shift makes fine adjustments; double-click resets them. Drag the image to pan, wheel to zoom toward the cursor, double-click to reset the view. A/D or left/right rotates; W/S or up/down tilts. Steady view disables automatic spinning. Hold growth stops audio evolution; Freeze frame stops display updates.

Sixteen controls support FL host automation: music drive, sensitivity, motion, color, hold, intricacy, filaments, bass evolution, mid contours, high detail, branch scale, spread, fractal power, orbit shape, feedback life and orbit density. Move a dial, then use FL Tools > Last tweaked > Create automation clip. A complete dial drag is one host automation gesture. Other scene controls still save with the project.

The voices tab opens by default. Bass, mids and highs leave different changes
in the evolving structure. Music changes local orbital paths, contours, detail
and color over time. Kicks do not enlarge the entire image or pull it back to a
resting size. The camera stays steady. Complete shapes overlap without pie-slice
sector cuts. Mouse pan and zoom still work.

Start with the default music drive and sensitivity. Motion changes how quickly
sound writes into the structure. Hold growth keeps the current pose; silence
holds it too. Your selected fractal family stays selected.

VISIBILITY
Heavy input cannot cut the live fractal layer. Feedback keeps a persistent mathematical body; Julia evolves around an attracting fixed point. An image remains present while its source is active. Trap is still an intentional source cut.

THE MATH
A stereo FFT supplies 24 frequency bands and spectral/stereo measurements to three spectral-transport fields with sound-derived forces and skew matrices, integrated with RK4. Three accumulated sound phases drive local orbits at fixed branch radius and scale. The trajectories also change Julia coefficients, Mandelbox folds and orbit coloring. Fine image detail comes from complete, overlapping recursive copies. Silence holds accumulated growth and the native feedback image. See MATHEMATICS.md for equations, sources and numerical limits.

Mandelbrot, Burning Ship and Tricorn use their distinct canonical recurrences at power 2. Higher powers are generalized variants. Julia's parameter evolves with sound. Recursive zoom changes coordinate charts while preserving the selected point; it is a repeated fractal atlas, not arbitrary-precision infinite zoom into one unchanged Mandelbrot set. Finite image resolution, GPU precision and iteration limits apply.

SAVING AND OUTPUT
Audio passes through unchanged with zero added sample latency. Save your FL project to retain the image, scene settings and evolved sound state. The processor continues evolving while its editor is closed. Image data increases project size. Render size returns to the default on reopening.

Output contains PNG, silent WebM and scene-setting exports. Recordings do not include song audio; combine them with the exported song afterward. Stop recording before closing the editor. All source images and host audio stay local.

VALIDATION
The native test host checks unchanged audio, automation, saved-project migration
and the shipping editor. Behavior checks cover lasting sound histories, absence
of envelope-driven geometry, complete branches, bounded geometry and silence.
Generated image and mathematical frames are inspected locally. These checks are
distinct from auditioning the new installation inside FL Studio.

VST is a trademark of Steinberg Media Technologies GmbH. U4 Recursion is an independent u4iah instrument. Third-party licenses are included in licenses/.
