Extract text from EFFECT files
To convert your EFFECT file to another format, you need Payday 2 or other Game software.
To convert other file formats to the "Particle & Shader Configuration" file type, you need software like Payday 2 or a similar tool.
An .EFFECT file is rarely a standalone media file; it is a set of technical instructions - written in code or XML - that tells a rendering engine how to draw smoke, fire, lighting, or video filters. These files are heavily fragmented across different ecosystems, with the most common originating from the Diesel Engine (used in Payday 2), REDengine (used in Cyberpunk 2077), and streaming tools like OBS Studio.
The biggest obstacle for users is that .EFFECT files are not universal. A particle effect from a game cannot be opened in a standard video player, nor can it be imported into Adobe After Effects without specific plugins. They are often binary-encoded or obfuscated text, making them unreadable in standard text editors like Notepad. To modify them or view their parameters, you typically need to convert them into a human-readable format like TXT, XML, or JSON. For archiving or code analysis, converting to plain text is the safest route. For active modding, you must identify the specific game engine (e.g., Diesel vs. Source 2) to determine if the file requires decompiling tools like WolvenKit or just a syntax-highlighting code editor.
Convert.Guru analyzes your EFFECT file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
Users also converted MP4, ZONE, SEB and TAC files.
If you want to convert EFFECT file to MP4, AVI, MOV, WMV, FLV, WEBM, MKV, M4V, 3GP, OGV, ASF or RM, you can use Payday 2 or similar software from the "Visual Effects Definition Script" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….
To convert MTS, MOV, RMVB, DIVX, RM, H264, TS, WMV, VOB, MP4, XVID or AVI files to EFFECT, try Payday 2 or another comparable tool in the "Visual Effects Definition Script" category.
The history of Convert.Guru began over 25 years ago in California with Tom Simondi’s file-format database. A former contributor to Space Shuttle development and a software pioneer of the 1980s, Simondi established a trusted resource for file type analysis that was even referenced by Microsoft Windows XP. Today, we use modern technology to process and convert thousands of file formats while continually improving our EFFECT converter.