Shaders

I've always thought of graphics, shaders, etc. as magic. They are interesting to me though, its just never something I've thought to explore from a technical standpoint. Partially because I thought my efforts better spent on skills that I can use at work, partially because I cared more about consuming their output than producing them. Recently though, I very briefly touched on a couple projects. First, I was interested in seeing what AI could do with C++. I asked it to think of a project, and it produced a list. I thought it would be cool to pick a raytracing 3D render program. All it did was render a 3D Sphere and point light at it, nothing crazy, but it was interesting to see what C++ was capable of because I don't really know the language at all. Then I just happened to stumble upon this Reddit post. I was looking at how people configured Niri for some inspiration, and this post blew me away. I spent some time trying to see if Claude could make shaders, and in the debugging process WIPED through my tokens. So I ended up copying the background and shaders in this post. I haven't learned a lot about them, but for the first time in a long time, I've actually had ideas in my head that I want to see if I can build them. Seeing someone create the smoke effect made me realize how much is actually possible with this technology. I want to create a bunch of shaders and have them randomly select on window open and close. I have ideas in my head for what the shaders will look like. I've always liked art styles and graphics, but this feels like the first time my more math and computer centric brain can produce something. Maybe I'll give it a whirl.