Alembic

Changelog

All notable changes to Alembic Shader Lab will be documented in this page.

[0.2.4] 2026-04-10

Added

  • Procedural-to-image bridge: procedural shaders can now be pushed into image mode as compositional layers
  • New image layer styling controls: corner radius and shadow

Improved

  • Export rendering for still captures is more robust across shader-heavy compositions
  • Canvas setup UX now includes live dimension preview in settings flow
  • Landing flow: the initial view is now the upgraded canvas initiation modal, and image mode is the default mode as procedural shaders are available there

Fixed

  • Shareable card layout and mobile capture behavior are more reliable
  • WebGL compositor shader texture handling was tightened to reduce rendering inconsistencies

[0.2.3] 2026-03-26

Added

  • Gold on indigo paper shader

[0.2.2] 2026-03-22

Added

  • Shareable card export workflow with live preview, copy-to-clipboard, and PNG save actions
    • Both image mode and procedural mode
    • Modest paper texture overlay on each card
  • New shaders: rain window and soap bubble

Improved

  • Shareable export modal now resolves shader names from the active export source (image stack vs selected procedural shader)
  • Shader parameter UIs now handle binary toggle params and hex color params more cleanly
  • New image shader layers and shader switches now initialize parameter state from shader defaults for more predictable behavior
  • Halftone and dither shaders improved significantly

Fixed

  • Restored WYSIWYG consistency in image exports by capturing from the live compositor at the requested export size
  • Fixed broken image export paths across PNG/GIF/MP4/WebM capture flows
  • Exported 3D layers now preserve saved camera pose more reliably during frame rendering
  • Shader pass execution now merges default shader params with layer overrides to prevent missing-default rendering issues
  • Fixed card overlay shader loading paths and added type coverage for card shader registries

[0.2.1] 2026-03-20

Added

  • More reliable image-mode export pipeline for complex layer stacks
  • Export warmup controls to help animations and 3D renders start cleanly before capture

Improved - Performance

  • Smoother zooming and panning in the compositing canvas, with less stutter during interaction
  • Faster and more stable frame capture for exports, especially in scenes with 3D layers
  • Better GPU-to-export synchronization to reduce capture hiccups and inconsistent frames

Fixed

  • Procedural export now correctly waits for async pre-capture work
  • GIF exports are more consistent across longer captures

[0.2.0] 2026-03-18

Added — 3D layers in image mode

  • 3D layers as a new layer type within the image compositing stack
  • Ten 3D primitives: sphere, torus, box, icosahedron, cylinder, torusKnot, plane, text, svgExtrude, meshFile
  • Torus knot parameters (knot P and Q) for richer knot variants
  • Surface mode selection: solid, wireframe, edge, vertex instance or point cloud
  • 3D edit mode: double-click a 3D layer (or use context menu / stack panel) to enter orbit camera editing; camera pose is saved when exiting
  • Text primitive: 3D extruded text with content and styling controls
  • SVG extrusion: extrude SVG paths to 3D with depth, bevel (thickness, size, segments) and optional file import
  • Custom mesh uploads: OBJ, STL, and PLY formats for meshFile primitive
  • Animated rotation: continuous rotation with configurable speed and axis (x, y, z, xyz)
  • Extended lighting controls: point light (azimuth, elevation, distance) and directional light parameters

Improved

  • 3D is inline-only in image mode — removed standalone 3D mode; 3D layers live alongside other compositional layers
  • Scene management: null checks for critical components and updated default material colors for consistency
  • Layer processing: ThreeDLayer is converted to image format before compositional checks for correct export and compositing flow
  • Workspace context menu: "edit 3d scene" action for 3D layers

[0.1.9] 2026-03-11

Added

  • Snapping functionality for layer positioning in the compositing canvas
  • Image layer transformations: flip horizontal and flip vertical
  • Aspect ratio locking for image layers during resizing
  • New layer management operations:
    • Merge down (merges selected layer with the one below)
    • Merge visible (collapses all visible layers into one)
    • Flatten to image (renders everything into a single static image layer)
  • Categorized canvas presets (Social Media, Web, Presentations, Print) loaded from a local JSON configuration
  • Customizable workspace context menu with custom right-click behavior
  • Canvas pan functionality - togglable with the hotkey G

Improved

  • Standardized context menu labels for better UI consistency
  • Refactored layer squashing and merging logic for reliability
  • Optimized UV mapping and location binding in the WebGL compositor
  • Geometric shader masks can be positioned from the canvas, not only from the sliders like before
  • Canvas zooming behavior: no longer just locks to the left of the canvas
  • Wrapped export settings in desktop within an accordion to presere screen real estate

Fixed

  • Restored missing grain effect in the Chladni Cymatics shader
  • Canvas automatically zooming down on mobile on load

[0.1.8] 2026-03-09

Added

  • Video & GIF exports in both procedural and image lab
    • Parameters can be tweaked during the export; everything will be captured in real-time

[0.1.7] 2026-03-04

Improved

  • Semantic search modal filters by shaders' IDs copied from the explore view
  • Fixed before:after functionality in the editor canvas

[0.1.6] - 2026-02-26

Added

  • Interactive 3D visualization of the semantic shader space at /explore
  • Drag-and-drop image support for the image lab
  • Saving projects as .shaderlab files
  • Loading projects from .shaderlab files

[0.1.5] - 2026-02-24

Added

  • Preliminary Google Fonts integration
    • Popular fonts available
    • Local font upload support
  • Ko-fi support link

[0.1.4] - 2026-02-23

Added

  • Semantic embeddings + search
    • enables vibes-based shader search
    • implemented via search query's cosine similarity to shader description vector embeddings
  • Gradient layers
    • linear, radial, conic
    • enabled palette generation from images

Improved

  • Blur effect no longer leaks between layers, but only applies to the selected layer like it should
  • Layer name truncation in the stack panel: no more horizontal layout shifts with lengthy layer names

[0.1.3] - 2026-02-21

Added

  • Transparency in the control menu on mobile so the color changes of the shader can be seen better

[0.1.2] - 2026-02-17

Added

  • Initial changelog setup
  • Basic image layer luminosity sliders (brightness, contrast, exposure)
  • Film image shader category with five shaders

Improved

  • Paper texture image shader optimization
    • less loop iterations
    • branchless masking
    • flattened uv transforms
    • removed voronoi creases completely for now
    • no longer exposing rgb tint uniforms via UI
  • Text processing in the compositional editor
    • container box is resizeable from the canvas
    • text overflow is handled baed on width of the container box
    • double-click to edit actually lets text be edited
  • Mobile UI layout
    • moved UI toggle in procedural mode from header to a blurred floating button in the bottom right
    • added changelog access via a hamburger menu on both modes

[0.1.1] - 2026-02-16

Added

  • Initial release