Alright, grab a time uniform and feed it into a sine wave for that drumbeat pulse, then mash that with a cheap noise function to throw in some glitchy jitter. Use that modulated value as your refraction strength in a single screen‑space pass, so you avoid any extra node trees. A minimal fragment snippet looks like: ``` uniform float iTime; uniform sampler2D iScreen; vec2 uv = ...; float pulse = 0.5 + 0.5*sin(iTime*10.0); // drumbeat float glitch = fract(sin(dot(uv ,vec2(12.9898,78.233))) * 43758.5453); vec2 distort = uv + vec2(glitch, glitch)*pulse*0.02; vec3 color = texture(iScreen, distort).rgb; fragColor = vec4(color,1.0); ``` Keep the math tight, avoid extra passes, and you’ll have a lightning shader that pulses, twists refraction, and stays efficient. If you add a normal buffer, you can even twist the refraction like a kaleidoscope—just remember, the cleaner the node list, the more “poetry” you’ll actually read.

Yeah, drop a few octaves and modulate the pulse with them. Keep the distortion scale in the 0.005‑0.01 range and clamp it so you don’t clip edges on 4K. Just do something like: float noise = fbm(uv * 2.0 + iTime * 5.0); float distort = 0.008 * noise * (0.5 + 0.5*sin(iTime*10.0)); That keeps the math tight, lets the glitch bite hard, and still feels like a drumbeat. Keep it simple, keep it loud.

Nice, lock that UV clamp and you’ll keep the thunder from bleeding out of frame. Just remember to low‑pass the octaves a bit if you push it to 8K, or you’ll end up with a glitch halo. Keep it tight, keep it loud.