Alembic

Changelog

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

[0.2.12] 2026-06-11

Added

  • First-upload shader directions: after uploading an image to image mode, Alembic analyzes the photo and suggests creative directions with live shader previews — pick one, shuffle for more, or start blank
  • Copy image to clipboard (PNG) from the export panel in image mode and from procedural mode controls
  • WebP as an additional still-image export format alongside PNG in both image and procedural modes
  • New image shaders: Hexagonal Halftone, Magnifying Glass, and Emboss / Deboss

Improved

  • Palette extraction for procedural shader layers on image stacks: inline “extract from image” file picker and a cleaner named palette generation dropdown replace the separate color-picker modal
  • Paper Texture image shader: richer fiber noise and color calculations
  • Explore shader preview: compact mode hides the intensity slider when embedded in direction cards
  • Text compositing: FXAA pass skips text regions via a screen-space mask so antialiased text stays crisp on export

Fixed

  • Upload directions sheet dismisses cleanly through the skip flow without leaving orphaned state

[0.2.11] 2026-05-20

Added

  • Image mode: per-layer freeze for animated shader layers (FROZEN/ACTIVE control and stack snowflake toggle)
  • 3D primitive: Wobbling Plane — animated terrain surface with adjustable bumpiness and wobble speed, ideal as a lit base under gradient shaders

[0.2.10] 2026-05-18

Added

  • Image gallery beta: browse example work in an infinite canvas with pinch-to-zoom and thumbnail-backed loading (assets served from R2)
  • Gallery info dialog with onboarding context on the gallery page
  • Shader preview browser: browse and preview shaders before adding them to the canvas, integrated into the canvas init flow and image lab
  • Toast notifications in the app shell
  • Shareable export modal: context menu actions and improved preview workflow
  • New shaders: XMB-inspired particle waves (procedural) and swirlable fluted glass (image)

Improved

  • Gallery and editor canvases: zoom-aware background grid scaling that stays responds to zoom level
  • Shader preview browser: responsive layout and scroll behavior on small screens and mobile
  • Shader thumbnail previews: tuned default parameters and PNG-based placeholder for correct sizing on mobile
  • Impressionist shader touched up for apter representation

Fixed

  • Sample image and composition dimensions used for shader previews

[0.2.9] 2026-05-12

Improved

  • Canvas compositing: layers can now exceed the bounds of the canvas on all sides for more flexible composition

Fixed

  • The before-after slider on the canvas is functional

[0.2.7] 2026-05-04

Added

  • Layer lock/unlock in the shader stack so locked layers skip canvas edits
  • Rotation and flipping for image and shape layers from the canvas and context menus; rotate text layers with the same tooling
  • Snap-to-guide improvements with contextual center guides and clearer hints on the canvas
  • HSL controls for fills and strokes (hue, saturation, lightness, invert) including compositing shader support where applicable
  • Canvas presets grouped and loaded dynamically from JSON; changing canvas dimensions keeps layers positioned proportionally instead of collapsing to a corner
  • Scaffolded background removal and higher quality image and video exports for pro tier to come
  • Eraser mode for raster work on compositing canvases—including rotation-aware strokes, live preview, and accurate bounds—with settings from image controls

Improved

  • WebM/video exports expose clearer quality modes (updated muxing dependency under the hood)
  • Drag and snapping tweaks for steadier repositioning across the canvas, with anchors that stay reachable inside the viewport
  • Text layers: richer styles and alignment preserved from the inspector; richer-text editing is decoupled from layout so typing no longer jitter-shifts composition layout
  • Text fill color sourced only from layer properties instead of drifting via inline-only rich-text color
  • Typography UI: curated font sections plus smarter bundled/Google font detection for faster picker navigation
  • Compositing renderer updates for sharper text layouts, letter-spacing accuracy, and rotation-aware metrics
  • 3D layer editor exposes a transparent background toggle synchronized with saved scene/global background colors plus safe migration inside project state
  • Export modals (still + animation flows) tightened layout plus scroll-safe behavior on smaller chrome or shorter viewports

[0.2.6] 2026-04-21

Added

  • True higher-resolution exports: 1.5×, 2×, 3×, and 4× resolution options for both procedural and image-mode video/GIF exports
  • Granular PNG export presets in image mode: 1×, 1.5×, 2×, 3×, 4× — each genuinely re-rasterized, not just upscaled

Improved

  • Procedural shader exports now switch the live canvas into a manual-resize mode while recording, so higher-resolution outputs contain real additional detail rather than enlarged pixels
  • Export modal UI clarified: each scale shows the resulting pixel dimensions and tier (free / pro), and disables options that would exceed the 8192 px max edge

[0.2.5] 2026-04-18

Added

  • Cropping for image layers: crop handles directly on the compositing canvas
  • Multi-shader selection in the explore view: select and add several shaders to the canvas at once

Improved

  • Text layers now use a full rich text editor with inline formatting and improved layout metrics
  • Shader blend modes expanded in the WebGL compositor with richer blending options
  • Semantic search in the explore view now jumps the camera to the matched shader node
  • Explore page: shader neighbor focus and selection state management, thumbnail previews

[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
  • Eleven 3D primitives: sphere, torus, box, icosahedron, cylinder, torusKnot, plane, wobblingPlane, 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