Rendering Pipeline Guide

This guide explains how triode turns chains and scenes into pixels.

Pipeline overview

1. A chain (osc().color().phong()) builds a transform graph.
2. The graph compiles into shader/pass descriptors.
3. Output (o0, o1, ...) builds an EffectComposer pass stack.
4. Passes render into render targets and/or screen.
5. Final output can be reused as texture via src(o0) or .tex().

Primary entities

• GlslSource

- chain object for transform compilation.

• Output

- owns composer passes, temporary render targets, camera state.

• TriodeMaterialPass / TriodeRenderPass / TriodeFadePass

- pass types for shader-only, scene rendering, and feedback/fade accumulation.

• TriodeUniform

- shared uniform registry (time, resolution, mouse, bpm, output textures).

Scene pass vs material pass

• Material pass: full-screen shader operations and chain composition.
• Scene pass: object-based rendering using Three.js scene/camera.

A single output can mix both, including post FX and layers.

Feedback and accumulation

• prev() samples previous buffer in chain space.
• autoClear(amount, color) controls accumulation amount.

- amount = 1 behaves like clear. - 0 < amount < 1 leaves trails/fades.

Texture extraction

• .tex() renders chain to texture and returns a map-compatible texture.
• .texMat() returns a material with the rendered texture pre-attached.

Use this when connecting signal-space synthesis to geometry materials.

Layering and post processing

• scene layers can compile into isolated passes and be mixed back.
• fx options add post-process passes (blur, bloom, pixelate, etc.).

For heavy scenes, keep FX selective and benchmark frame time impact.

Error handling

• runtime errors in update, afterUpdate, and tick are routed through onError when provided.
• use onError in host apps to centralize diagnostics and recovery.