Graphics experiments

A guided collection of graphics experiments: glyph rendering, CRT effects, atmospheres, voxel paths, and geometric page layouts.

This is my annotated fork of ngwnos/files. The original repository describes itself as a place to use GitHub like Pastebin. The source files come from upstream; I add documentation and navigation to help readers understand what is here and where to start.

I maintain this as a study collection with a local experiment viewer, not an installable graphics library. The viewer builds successfully. I've included four browser captures below; fog and pathfinding captures remain outstanding. The former name ascii described one part of it: a shader that draws an image using glyphs. The other experiments explore different visual techniques.

Why explore it?

What interests me is turning visual ideas into explicit machinery: choosing glyphs in a shader, representing fog in a 3D grid, finding routes through voxel geometry, or arranging commentary around a protected central text.

For graphics developers and technical artists, these are concrete implementations to read alongside their own experiments. For interface designers, the layout generator offers a different way to think about sources, annotations, and main content sharing a page.

Find an experiment

File	What it explores	Where the value is
asciiMaterial.ts	Three.js node material using a glyph atlas, source textures, gradient signals, and optional ramp dithering	Start here to study image-to-glyph rendering in a GPU material. The host must supply textures and uniforms.
CRTScreenScene.ts	A configurable CRT-style scene with screen sources and shader effects	Study how screen content and display effects are assembled; external media and host integration are separate concerns.
BioluminescenceScene.ts	Particles, lighting, bloom, and volume effects	Explore how several techniques combine into a luminous scene. The viewer supplies reconstructed demo parameters.
PlanetScene.ts	Planet rendering with atmospheric scattering controls	Read how atmosphere parameters feed rendering. The viewer supplies reconstructed demo parameters.
BoxFroxelPipeline.ts	A volumetric fog pipeline using a 3D texture	Study a froxel: a cell in a camera-oriented volume grid. The viewer supplies bounded demo grid constants.
voxelPathfindingWorker.ts	Worker-based path construction through voxel geometry, including A*	Study grid representation, route search, and transferable result buffers. A host must construct the input grid.
orl_clean_band_generator.py	Seeded geometric layouts with rectangular bands and L-shaped annotation regions	Explore main text surrounded by glosses, sources, references, and editorial apparatus; exports PNG, SVG, and JSON.

Two PDFs are also retained from upstream. Their filenames alone do not establish authorship, provenance, or permission to reuse their contents.

In action

I captured the local viewer in Microsoft Edge on 2026-10-09. These images are losslessly cropped to the visible canvas. Browser chrome and page text were removed; rendered pixels were not retouched, recolored, resized, or generated. Some canvases extended below the original viewport, so their captures show only the visible portion. These demonstrate the captured frames, not cross-browser or performance qualification.

Glyph material

The retained glyph shader renders a procedural source image through a generated six-character atlas. Shader implementation: upstream; demo textures and host: this fork.

CRT display

The retained CRT scene displays its internal Julia shader. Keyboard, ROM, and external-media loading are disabled in this demo.

Planet atmosphere

The retained planet scene using newly reconstructed demo parameters. These parameters are not recovered upstream defaults.

Bioluminescence

The retained bioluminescence scene using newly reconstructed demo parameters. The original dark exposure is preserved.

Geometric page layouts

Actual output from orl_clean_band_generator.py: nine seeded arrangements of main content, glosses, sources, disputes, and outer reference material. These are geometric regions, not pages of typeset text. The source is upstream work. See the capture and reproduction notes, vector output, and layout data.

Froxel fog and voxel pathfinding do not yet have captures in this fork. Their hosts are supplied, but visual acceptance remains open. See the capture provenance for the scope of the available evidence.

Start here

1. Pick one technique from the table; the files are not one application.
2. Read the integration notes for its dependencies and missing pieces.
3. Resolve permissions before incorporating source into another project.

Run the local viewer

Node.js 22.12+ or a compatible later release:

npm ci
npm test
npm run build
npm run dev

Open http://127.0.0.1:5188/ and choose an experiment. The host uses Three.js 0.186.1 and Vite 8.3.4 with a committed lockfile. Froxel compute requires WebGPU. The viewer reports initialization errors rather than substituting another image. CRT uses its internal Julia shader; keyboard, ROM, and DOS loading are disabled. Planet and bioluminescence presets and fog constants are newly reconstructed demo inputs, not recovered upstream assets. The viewer uses a fixed rendering size; responsive resizing and browser/GPU compatibility remain to be qualified.

The Python generator is independent of npm and has external dependencies and a fixed output path; see the reproduction notes.

What I've added

• A plain-language map of the experiments and their practical uses.
• An integration checklist that distinguishes source snippets from runnable demos.
• Explicit upstream attribution and an honest account of the collection's limits.
• A local viewer, pinned dependencies, reconstructed demo inputs, and focused tests. Its successful build does not establish visual correctness.

The rendering and pathfinding implementations remain upstream work. No visual, performance, or production-readiness claims follow from my documentation changes.

Attribution and permissions

Original collection: ngwnos/files. The documentation pass starts from fork commit 7d471e2.

No repository-wide license is present in that snapshot. Public availability is not a grant of reuse rights. Confirm permission with the relevant rights holders before copying, modifying for redistribution, or shipping these sources or PDFs. I do not assign a license to upstream material.

Support the work

If these explanations help you understand a technique or save time exploring the collection, consider sponsoring my work. Your support helps sustain my documentation, curation, and independent development.

Sponsorship here supports my work on this fork; it does not imply that I authored the upstream experiments or provide a license to their contents. Please also credit the original authors when discussing their work.

Thank you for helping make useful technical ideas easier to understand.

Tim V