When the Mandala feature is activated, rendered patterns appear within a shape on the screen.  Effect tiles are automatically positioned to maximize symmetries, creating a pleasing sense of balance.  Wandering can be enabled to produce flowing or pulsating motion. The Appearance Options screen includes parameters to control the rendering of Mandalas.  (The Mandala button on Kaleid Tools can be right-clicked to quickly access Appearance Options.)  Besides a traditional circular outline, the Mandala Shape can be set to Oval, Diamond, Hexagon, Stencil or Stencil Negative.  A Stencil image can be chosen.  Typically this is a black-and-white or grayscale silhouette picture, but any image will work, even a color photo.  Kaleider Patterns will show through the lighter portions of the Stencil picture, while the Mandala Color will appear in the darker areas.  The Stencil Negative option reverses this.  A few simple sample Stencils are included.

A Mode parameter can be set to On/Off or Blend.  On/Off will simply treat light and dark areas as either totally transparent or totally opaque.  Blend, on the other hand, will allow a full range of translucency, blending the pattern and color according to the degree of lightness/darkness.  A Strength value can be used to control the intensity of blending, essentially adjusting the contrast of the Mandala Shape (or Stencil image) by accentuating or lessening the differences between light and dark areas.  (Strength adjustment can sometimes help make a normal photo usable as a Stencil silhouette.)  A Mandala Color can be chosen.

Mandalas and Stencils can optionally be used with 3D Rooms by setting the Apply Mandala/Stencil to Rooms option in the Room Options screen.

Mandala properties can be recorded in Scripts, and later modified via the Script Control and and Editing screen.  So it's possible to create Scripts with rendered patterns appearing within changing shapes, Stencils and background colors.