The Series

Twelve essays, meant to be read in order. Each one revisits a single idea โ€” a renderer, a shader, a budget, a habit โ€” rebuilds it in a personal project, and asks what still holds up.

  1. Building My First Renderer: What I Thought Rendering Was, and What It Actually Is October 29, 2026
  2. The First Shader I Actually Understood November 3, 2026
  3. Shadows Are a Budget Problem, Not a Quality Problem November 8, 2026
  4. Materials Are Data, Not Formulas November 13, 2026
  5. Lighting Models Break at the Edges November 18, 2026
  6. Stop Guessing: A Profiling Habit for Graphics Programmers November 23, 2026
  7. Draw Calls, State Changes, and Other Invisible Costs November 28, 2026
  8. Rendering Under Tight Budgets: Small Devices, Big Constraints December 3, 2026
  9. Post-Processing Is Where Taste Lives December 8, 2026
  10. Why I'm Building a Custom Engine Again December 13, 2026
  11. What Years of Rendering Taught Me: Five Principles December 18, 2026
  12. My Next Study Plan: CUDA, Kernels, and Attention December 23, 2026