Curriculum map

The whole path, in order. Ten core modules teach the fundamentals end to end; the two electives afterward go deeper into things that matter once you're past them. Gold numbers are core modules, teal are electives.

  1. 00·Orientation — what a shader actually isCPU vs. GPU, the render pipeline in one diagram, why 2D games barely touch the vertex shader, the debug-by-visualizing habit, and moving between Shadertoy and a real engine.Test →
  2. 01UV space and coordinatesNormalized UVs, why WebGL's y-axis starts at the bottom, the aspect-ratio trap, and hand-rolling a circle with no length() or distance().Test →
  3. 02Vectors & trig, rebuilt for shadersPoints vs. vectors, the dot product as "how aligned," and rotating a shape by rotating the sampling coordinate instead.Test →
  4. 03Color theory for the fragment shaderRGB vs. HSV vs. HSL, the Inigo Quilez cosine-palette formula, and gamma correction — why mixing two colors can come out muddier than either one.Test →
  5. 04Shapes with signed distance fieldsWhat "signed" buys you, anti-aliasing against real pixel width with fwidth(), and the "transform the space, not the shape" idea behind every SDF trick.Test →
  6. 05Noise & randomnessHash functions, the real family tree (value / Perlin / simplex / Worley), and fractal Brownian motion for cloud- and fire-like patterns.Test →
  7. 06Motion & time-based effectsu_time as your only clock, screen-space distortion (heat haze, water ripples), and one-point reflection folded into a live kaleidoscope.Test →
  8. 07Texture sampling & sprite effectsWhat texture() actually samples, nearest vs. bilinear filtering, real alpha-compositing math, and a hash-driven dissolve with a glowing edge.Test →
  9. 08Stylized & art shadersFake lighting with a fake normal, posterized toon shading, blend-mode formulas, and chromatic aberration by re-evaluating the scene per channel.Test →
  10. 09Capstone: recreate a real game effectNo fixed solution. Pick a real reference — dissolve-death, shoreline shimmer, or toon outline — and build it from everything above.Test →

Electives

Optional, unlocked once the core path clicks — real, working lessons, not placeholders.

  1. E1Performance fundamentalsALU math vs. texture-lookup cost, why branching is expensive on a GPU, and a live frame-time readout showing fbm's octave count cost in real time.Test →
  2. E22D raymarching & fake lightingSoft shadows by raymarching toward a light through an SDF scene, plus fake normals for free from the distance field's gradient.Test →