Beginners Guide to Stream Overlays Packages

Welcome to our beginner friendly guide! If you have never heard of stream overlays or stream overlays packages - this is your ultimate guide.

I'd recommend reading this alongside some of our other blog articles such as "What are Stream Overlays?", "Stream Overlays Packages for every budget" and "Stream Overlay Essentials", as well as our many other streaming resources and guides you can find in News and Resources.

So, what is a stream overlay package?

Stream overlays are a graphic or set of graphics to be used on a streaming platform - the major ones being Twitch, YouTube, Facebook, Kick and TikTok. These are usually installed using a stream overlay software such as Streamlabs, StreamElements or OBS. These graphics sit on top of your stream to give information, encourage engagement and interactivity with your stream, and to be visually stimulating to increase watch times.

Stream Overlays Packages are a pack of the overlays that are most commonly used together to enhance your livestream on a streaming platform. These graphics can be static, animated or 3D, and usually feature borders, alerts, informative panels and scenes, chat boxes, and more. These overlay packs come in a variety of designs and aesthetics, as well as dynamic static or animation styles.

Are stream overlays even that important?

In short....Yes.

There are many different types of stream overlays, each differing in their purpose when used on your stream.

Your main reasonings for using stream overlays are the following:

• Visually pleasing livestreams will attract more viewers
• Overlays that contain information about yourself, your stream and your content will introduce a potential viewer to your stream
• Informative borders will inform viewers of important information, and will allow viewers to be thanked and congratulated when they help you reach a stream goal
• Viewer triggered events will create a dynamic interaction and also show gratitude
• Thematic overlays will set at atmosphere for your stream content
• Using correctly sized and high quality overlays will show a great deal of professionalism.
• Engaging and interactive overlays will encourage viewers to..... yes that is correct, engage and interact with your stream.
  

What can I find in a stream overlays package?

When you grab a stream overlays package, or a stream packs, it will contain the following in most cases:

• Webcam boarders in varying sizes to fit how you have orientated your camera.
• Stream scenes such as stream starting, stream ending, be right back, intermission.
• Chat boxes to place around your chat and for use whilst you are on an intermission or choose to display your chat on stream.
• Alerts for different viewer actions such as follows, subs, donations and other goals. These are an amazing engagement tool to interact with viewers.
• Stream Labels for customization.
• Panels to contain your stream information.

This is a very generalized version of what stream overlays packages would contain. Specifically to GETREKT, you would get the above from any of our stream overlays packages and the below:

• Social Media Banners.
• Editable PSDS for Twitch Panels and Social Media Banners.
• Additional customization options depending on product type.

If you choose to upgrade to an animated stream overlays package you will find many of the options include dynamic animations and additional overlays such as:

• Stinger Stream Transitions to move from one scene to another seamlessly
• Premium Sound Effects for alerts and stingers

And finally, in our ultimate stream overlays packages bundles you will also find:

• 3D Chest Alerts. These are large scale alerts to celebrate large goals
• Emotes. Static and animated emotes are a great way to give back to your community as a reward for subscribers.

Below you will find some examples of stream overlays packages that vary in style, and also in contents.

Whilst the prospect of setting up your stream overlays packages may seem daunting, it is not!

First thing is first, choose your fighter - aka which streaming software you are going to use. The most popular are OBS Studio and Streamlabs. Both are free to download, include a host of customizable options and easy installation.

Once you have chosen your streaming software (and your streaming platform such as Twitch), you will want to look for your stream overlays! You have three options:

• Free - a great place to start for new streamers.
• Premade - ready made stream overlays packages are cost effective and high quality.
• Custom - custom stream overlays are for a big budget if you choose to hire to create them, if not it will require a lot of expertise and knowledge.

Go ahead and grab the overlays of your choice and then it's back into your streaming software.

With GETREKT Elements stream overlays packages, these all come with 1-click setup into Streamlabs, StreamElements and OBS. Super easy, stress-free, and quick!

We have also made this video guide that should be useful for much of your setup, and we have tons of setup guides within our Resources.

And that is your beginners guide to stream overlay packages - we hope this makes it a little clearer and a lot less overwhelming to install stream overlays onto your stream.

Remember - our Blog and Resources have many, many articles and guides on tips for streaming, setting up, what to stream, where to stream, how to engage your audience and more!

To keep up to date with us, and for more helpful guides you can follow us on all platforms @getrektlabs.

Sign up to our emails below to keep up to date on more articles, guides, news and releases.

Happy Holidays,
Em

Want exclusive free overlay assets, discounts, as well as tips and resources for content, set-up and more?

Our email subscribers receive all of this and more.

GETREKT Labs and GETREKT Elements create custom and pre-made stream overlays for YouTube, Facebook, Twitch, Kick, Tiktok and all major streaming platforms, for use with StreamElements, StreamLabs and OBS.

GETREKT Labs features custom stream overlays, animated Twitch overlays, interactive stream assets, 3D world building, Unreal Engine 5 environments, custom widgets, stream overlays for OBS, camera overlays, reactive overlays, emotes, alerts, sound effects (sfx), set-up, coding and more for all items. Set-up includes all platforms and integration with StreamLabs, Stream Elements and OBS.

GETREKT Elements features pre-made stream overlays and assets, including animated Twitch stream overlays, camera overlays, stream layouts, emotes, alerts, sfx, Twitch panels, scene transitions, stingers, OBS overlays and more – all with an easy 1 click set up in StreamLabs and StreamElements with OBS.