Gradient (Luma) Wipe — effect skill for transitions

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B appears in the order of a grayscale map (gradient, noise or the image's own brightness).

What it does

Built on Domain Warp Dissolve by HeyGen (HyperFrames), Apache-2.0. The write-up and recipes below are varg's.

Dark-to-light areas switch first, giving soft, organic or shaped reveals instead of one straight edge.

When: Elegant scene changes, nature, dreamy edits; custom shapes from any grayscale matte.

Watch out: Noisy mattes on noisy footage look like compression artefacts.

Timing: 0.6–1.2 s (CapCut Gradient Wipe 0.47 s)

Also called: Gradient Wipe, luma wipe, luma fade, noise dissolve, Dissolve II

In FFmpeg

Soft diagonal luma wipe with an xfade custom expression (0.15 softness band):

ffmpeg -i a.mp4 -i b.mp4 -filter_complex \
"[0:v]fps=30,settb=AVTB,format=yuv420p[a];[1:v]fps=30,settb=AVTB,format=yuv420p[b];\
 [a][b]xfade=transition=custom:duration=0.8:offset=4.2:\
expr='A*clip(((X/W+Y/H)/2-(1-P)*1.15+0.15)/0.15,0,1)+B*(1-clip(((X/W+Y/H)/2-(1-P)*1.15+0.15)/0.15,0,1))'[v]" -map "[v]" out.mp4

For an arbitrary matte use maskedmerge with a thresholded matte video, or GL LumaWipe via editly (1.x luma).

In HyperFrames

Shader domain-warp from @hyperframes/shader-transitions placed at the cut (t = 4 s):

<div id="s1" class="scene" style="background:#0a0a0a"><video src="a.mp4" muted playsinline></video></div>
<div id="s2" class="scene" style="background:#0a0a0a"><video src="b.mp4" muted playsinline></video></div>
<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/@hyperframes/shader-transitions/dist/index.global.js"></script>
<script>
  const tl = HyperShader.init({ bgColor: "#0a0a0a", scenes: ["s1", "s2"],
    transitions: [{ time: 4, shader: "domain-warp", duration: 0.8 }] });
  window.__timelines = window.__timelines || {}; window.__timelines["main"] = tl;
</script>

Each .scene needs an explicit background-color equal to bgColor. Or install the ready block: npx hyperframes add domain-warp-dissolve.

In Remotion

import {TransitionSeries, linearTiming, springTiming} from '@remotion/transitions';
import {dissolve} from '@remotion/transitions/dissolve';

<TransitionSeries>
  <TransitionSeries.Sequence durationInFrames={90}><ShotA /></TransitionSeries.Sequence>
  <TransitionSeries.Transition presentation={dissolve({})} timing={linearTiming({durationInFrames: 24})} />
  <TransitionSeries.Sequence durationInFrames={90}><ShotB /></TransitionSeries.Sequence>
</TransitionSeries>

Total = 90 + 90 - 24 frames: the transition overlaps the two shots. Shader presentations are built on Remotion's HTML-in-canvas: renders work out of the box (--gl=angle, or --gl=swangle without a GPU); the Studio preview needs Chrome with chrome://flags/#canvas-draw-element enabled. Remotion's dissolve is a shader dissolve with a glowing edge (lineWidth, spreadColor, hotColor), not a plain crossfade.

In CapCut

Transitions tab → Basic / Mask → Gradient Wipe, Dissolve II, Dissolve III. Desktop: drag the tile onto the cut between two clips and set Duration in the right panel ("Apply to all" reuses it on every cut). Mobile: tap the small white square between clips, pick the transition, drag the duration slider, tap ✓. Tab labels and placement change between versions and regions.

Ready-made components

Where this comes from

Use when

Not for

Install

Example output

https://s3.varg.ai/how-to/previews/f64f6fef6608/take-luma-gradient-wipe.mp4 — smoothleft between two shots, with the timeline strip of the edit. Footage: Cosmos Laundromat (2015), (CC) Blender Foundation | gooseberry.blender.org, CC BY 4.0; Charge (2022), Blender Studio | studio.blender.org, CC BY 4.0. (credit: Rendered by varg · Cosmos Laundromat (2015) + Charge (2022))

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Run the generation on varg

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