Click the "Select File" button above, and choose your EFFECT file.
You’ll see a preview, if available.
Click the "Convert file to..." button to extract text information.
Convert EFFECT to another file type
To convert EFFECT Effects to another format, you need OBS Studio or other Game software.
Convert a file to EFFECT
To convert other file formats to the "Particle & Shader Settings" file type, you need software like OBS Studio or a similar tool.
About EFFECT files
The .effect file extension is primarily used for game particle definitions and video shader effects across various proprietary engines. Notably, it is used by Overkill Software for Payday 2 (Diesel Engine), by CD Projekt for Cyberpunk 2077 (REDengine), and in broadcasting software like OBS Studio and the now-deprecated Snap Camera for shader configurations. These files store parameters, mathematical functions, and references to textures that dictate how light, smoke, or magic spells behave on screen. The main disadvantage of .effect files is their highly proprietary and engine-specific nature. A .effect file from Cyberpunk 2077 cannot be read by OBS Studio or Cocos Creator. They often require specific modding tools, SDKs, or the original game engine to open. Standard online image or video converters fail to process them because they do not contain actual video data, but rather code or binary instructions for the GPU. If you need to edit or convert an .effect file, your best targets are plain text formats like TXT, JSON, or XML depending on how the data is structured. Sometimes they are just raw text files containing HLSL or GLSL shader code. Because this is a closed, proprietary format, traditional conversion tools usually fail. If our analysis detects underlying plain text code or a supported embedded format, viewing or extracting the text is often possible.
Convert.Guru analyzes your EFFECT file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
If you want to convert EFFECT file to MP4, AVI, MOV, WMV, FLV, WEBM, MKV, M4V, 3GP, OGV, ASF or RM, you can use OBS Studio or similar software from the "Game & Video Visual Effects" 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 OBS Studio or another comparable tool in the "Game & Video Visual Effects" category.
The EFFECT Converter Story
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.