shader-gallery

🌌 Shader Gallery

Open the live gallery → · Repository source

Evidence-led WebGL2 shader and material research: interactive optical studies, reproducible previews, and licensed-source attribution.

Visual proof: the deployed live gallery is the current visual surface. It is intentionally linked rather than represented by an unversioned screenshot or GIF.

GLSL Status License

Current status

Shader Gallery is an active portfolio laboratory for interactive GLSL material studies. It combines standalone browser studies with a manifest-driven WebGL2 shader library, deterministic preview generation, native compile/link/render validation, browser QA, and provenance-aware evidence records.

The work is deliberately experimental: a shader can be compile-validated without being a measured or physically calibrated material. Material claims, performance tiers, and cross-device behavior remain bounded until a named trial records them.

Demo evidence and verification status

Scope Evidence currently available Status
Deployed gallery route The /docs/ gallery loaded with its hero and preview canvases during a browser check on 2026-10-27. Verified in a desktop browser
Hero screenshot / GIF No repository-owned, version-bound screenshot or GIF is currently recorded. Still needed
Mobile viewport No mobile capture or receipt is recorded. Unverified
Keyboard access The public gallery entry source includes pointer-activated cards; no keyboard acceptance result is recorded. Needs implementation and browser check
Reduced motion No prefers-reduced-motion behavior is present in the public gallery entry source, and no reduced-motion result is recorded. Needs implementation and browser check

These statuses apply to the public gallery entry page. They do not negate validation evidence held by individual studies; they prevent the README from making a broader accessibility or cross-device claim than the current public surface supports.

What this demonstrates

Active research directions

The current studies explore thin-film color, opal-like internal domains, labradorite-like oriented plates, dispersion, nacre, refraction, and controlled lighting. They are visual hypotheses and authorial approximations—not claims of mineral simulation, spectral calibration, or measured material performance.

The Material Validation Lab is the next bounded layer: it will test a Khronos abalone baseline, a thin-film bubble treatment against an RGB-proxy control, and an original procedural gold-foil field before choosing a broader runtime adapter.

Research and attribution

The project studies and may validate mechanisms from the following sources; source availability does not imply copied code or assets.

Exact revisions, licenses, permitted transfers, exclusions, and trial outcomes belong in the Material Validation Lab source registry. Do not use an experimental study as evidence of calibrated optical accuracy.

Branch map

Branch Role Merge / decision boundary
main Stable repository and public gallery baseline Receives reviewed, independently validated work only
feat/optical-studies-02 PR #15: three experimental studies and an interactive optical-studies surface Must resolve archive truthfulness and bfcache behavior before merge
fix/pr15-reconciliation PR #17: archive/source parity, bfcache recovery, and stale-document repair Stacked on PR #15; merge here first, then resolve PR #15 review threads
feat/material-validation-lab-v0 Evidence contracts, source registry, bounded material trial records Remains separate until three pilot receipts inform an integration decision

Shader families

Shader Aesthetic Technique
aurora Northern lights · soft ribbons of light Domain warping + fbm noise
stained-glass Cathedral light · jewel tones Voronoi + edge glow
fluid-psychedelic Lava lamp · melting color SDF blobs + palette cycling
mandala Sacred geometry · radial symmetry Polar coordinates + mirroring
textile-weave Fabric grain · woven structure Periodic functions + anisotropy
crystal-growth Frost · mineral formation Reaction-diffusion

The manifest-driven package currently contains 18 experimental shaders across material, optical, atmospheric, aurora, flow, and glow families. The table above is a conceptual vocabulary, not a claim that every listed study has the same implementation or evidence status.

🚀 Running Locally

git clone https://github.com/MelodicBloom/shader-gallery
cd shader-gallery
# Open any shader's index.html directly in browser
# or:
npx serve .

Legacy standalone shaders may live in their own folders. The active package lives under packages/shader-library-v1/source/; run its own validation commands from that directory.

Evidence graph architecture

The repository now includes an additive, read-only-first architecture for connecting shader validation receipts to a provenance-aware Neo4j/MCP graph:

The graph catalogs and connects receipts; it does not replace the shader validator or promote unsupported claims.

📁 Structure

shader-gallery/
├── aurora/
│   ├── index.html
│   └── shader.glsl
├── stained-glass/
├── fluid-psychedelic/
├── mandala/
└── docs/          ← GitHub Pages gallery index
    └── index.html

🔗 Related Projects

📄 License

MIT © Jennipher Troup