Table of Contents Show
For those who don’t know the tool: Empa3D builds real-time 3D worlds across Unreal and Unity projects, and Vizibeat is its music-driven plug-in for Unreal Engine. It sits between audio or live show-control inputs and the engine’s scene parameters, turning files, microphones, MIDI, OSC, DMX and note data into procedural motion that can stay live in the editor, feed Sequencer, drive a stage or LED workflow, or end as an Unreal render or packaged build where the licence tier permits it.
Music enters the graph
Vizibeat targets a production problem that is simple to describe and surprisingly expensive to solve by hand: making an Unreal scene react musically without turning every beat, fill and drop into another stack of manually placed keys. Empa3D’s current product pages position the plug-in as a procedural layer inside Unreal Engine 5. Instead of tying a scene to a fixed animation curve, artists build rules that translate musical or control signals into scene changes. A new track, a live input or a revised cue can then drive the same setup without rebuilding the animation from zero.
The key distinction is that Vizibeat is not a replacement for Unreal’s animation systems. Its novelty is workflow and control. The plug-in exposes music-aware inputs, a purpose-built node graph and a musical timeline, then hands the resulting values to ordinary Unreal targets such as lights, materials, cameras, skeletal meshes, meshed skeletons, post-processing, Niagara systems and Control Rigs. That makes it closer to a specialized signal-routing and procedural-animation layer than a separate DCC.
Motion Graphs keep the math backstage
The Motion Graph is the central artist-facing layer. Nodes shape and route incoming signals, with the developer deliberately hiding most of the underlying math behind a small set of controls. Graphs can be stacked as layers, edited while the scene is responding, and repointed at different inputs. Empa3D says Motion Graphs run continuously in the editor, including outside Play mode, which is useful when the goal is look development rather than gameplay testing.
For a motion designer, the practical gain is not that node graphs suddenly exist in Unreal. They already do. The gain is that common music-reactive operations arrive as a constrained visual system instead of a fresh Blueprint engineering job for every show. Vizibeat also supports bulk wiring, graph auto-tidying, reusable function nodes on higher tiers and graph transitions. Those are interface decisions, not new signal-processing algorithms, but interface decisions are often what decide whether a setup survives three client revisions and a last-minute track edit.
There is still a route back into Unreal’s native animation world. Empa3D documents baking animation curves into Sequencer, and its pricing matrix places that feature in Pro and Studio. The Motion Graph page describes the result as Sequencer keyframes that another department can open without Vizibeat. That matters for hand-off: a procedural setup can be used for exploration, then collapsed into conventional animation data before the shot or show moves downstream.
Bars and beats replace frame arithmetic
Vizibeat’s second core system is the Note Sequence, a timeline organised around measures, time signatures and BPM rather than a frame count alone. Notes generate signals that feed Motion Graphs. Artists can draw them, record them from a MIDI controller, or start from automatic analysis of an audio file (Excellent for those of us who see “Four on the Floor” as dropping the little plastic tambourine yet again). The system is designed for moments that need exact musical placement rather than a continuous frequency response.
The distinction between the two systems is useful. An Audio File input can provide immediate reactive motion from the waveform, while a Note Sequence gives the artist explicit authored events. Empa3D’s synchronization guide recommends using automatic estimates as a starting point and then refining alignment by eye and ear. That is a sensible boundary between automation and direction: the software can find likely beats and onsets, but it does not claim that every musically important cue can be inferred without artistic judgment.
The feature page also documents tempo automation. When a track changes speed, the musical timeline can follow an animated BPM rather than forcing the user to remap every event against fixed frames. For concert visuals, music videos or virtual-production sequences, that can keep the creative timing expressed in musical terms until the point where a frame-based deliverable is actually required.
Audio analysis stays close to the scene
The audio-analysis tools accept microphones, audio files and system audio. For live sources, the user can select channels and tune analysis parameters including FFT size and window choice. For prerecorded material, the plug-in can lock analysis to a Level Sequence so that scrubbing and timeline jumps remain synchronized.
A more production-specific feature is stem separation. The current pricing page states that separation runs entirely on the local machine and offline: a machine-learning model reads an existing song and extracts components without sending the audio away or generating new material. Empa3D describes the resulting stems as project-local files with analysis nodes created for them. That is materially different from a cloud service, both for turnaround and for handling unreleased music, although studios should still review the wider product’s account and licensing services separately.
From MIDI pads to lighting desks
Vizibeat is not limited to prerecorded tracks. The live-performance workflow accepts MIDI, OSC and DMX alongside audio and motion-tracking or controller inputs, like Art-Net and sACN for DMX, allowing a lighting desk to feed the Unreal scene. That places the plug-in in a useful middle ground for concert graphics, installations and in-camera work where the 3D scene needs to react to the same control ecosystem as the physical show.
The outputs are broad because the system works by driving exposed scene properties. Empa3D lists lighting parameters, material and Material Parameter Collection values, decals, Niagara particles, cameras, post-process settings, animation clips, morph targets, Control Rig, Level Sequences, VDB and Alembic playback, physics-related controls, level streaming, text, audio and custom Blueprints. This is not evidence that Vizibeat replaces any of those systems. It is evidence that the plug-in can provide a common musical control signal across them.
A reusable setup has real pipeline value
The strongest workflow argument is reuse. A procedural graph can be redirected from one song to another, from a file to MIDI, or from preproduction playback to a live source while keeping the same scene logic. For a touring visual package, that can reduce the amount of bespoke animation tied to one track. For a music-video campaign, it can allow a single environment and motion system to produce variants for a full track, teaser or alternate edit without rebuilding every cue.
That does not eliminate editorial or approval constraints. A client may still require exact camera cuts, locked durations or frame-specific hits. Vizibeat’s value is that the exploratory and repetitive layer can remain procedural until those moments need committing. Baking to Sequencer provides the exit when another artist, renderer or department needs ordinary keys rather than a live graph. In a mixed pipeline, that exit is as important as the reactive input.
Windows first, and mind the download page
Empa3D currently realeaes Windows 11 as the operating system for Vizibeat, with Unreal Engine 5.6, 5.7 and 5.8. Its public installation and start pages do not list macOS or Linux builds.
Licensing is part of the render decision
Vizibeat uses four tiers: Lite, Creator, Pro and Studio. The current pricing page lists Lite as free with no credit card and no time limit. Creator is a paid non-commercial tier. Pro is the solo commercial tier for users whose paid entity is below the stated USD $150,000 trailing-12-month revenue threshold. Studio is required for teams and for commercial users at or above that threshold. Paid subscriptions are offered monthly or annually through Paddle.
There are no per-show playback fees according to the product page. Seats are licensed per named individual and activated installation, and the pricing table documents a three-day offline grace period for Creator and seven days for Pro and Studio. Music rights remain outside the software licence. D’uh.
https://vizibeat.com/docs/sync-to-song/
| Product | Vizibeat |
| Developer | Empa3D LLC |
| Host compatibility | Unreal Engine 5 with current downloads for 5.6, 5.7 and 5.8 |
| Operating system | Windows 11 |
| Core systems | Motion Graph and Note Sequence |
| Inputs | Audio file, microphone, system audio, MIDI, OSC, DMX, Note Sequence, motion capture, game controller, keyboard, mouse and keyframes |
| Live control | DMX via Art-Net and sACN; MIDI; OSC |
| Local processing | Stem separation is documented as local and offline; the audio does not leave the computer |
| Output rights | Lite: watermarked; Creator: unwatermarked up to 1080p; Pro: unwatermarked up to 4K; Studio: unwatermarked at any resolution |
| Licence models | Lite free; Creator paid non-commercial; Pro paid solo commercial for eligible users below the stated revenue threshold; Studio paid commercial for teams and higher-revenue users |
| Offline grace | Creator: 3 days; Pro: 7 days; Studio: 7 days |
| Pricing | Lite is free; Creator, Pro and Studio are monthly or annual subscriptions. Current paid price, currency and taxes are disclosed at checkout |
| Refund policy | 30-day money-back guarantee on paid plans |
| Documentation | Vizibeat documentation |
| Download | Start Here |
