TiXL Meetup 2026-07-13 / Custom Shaders, Custom Mesh Drawing & the 4.2 Release

← Prev | Next →

A 3h55m TiXL developer meet-up with live Q&A, deep in the custom-shader family: fixing the raymarch perspective-shift and SortPoints bugs, an extended live tour of the new customizable mesh drawing (distance fields, point attributes, lights, image inputs), the 4.2 release with automatic backups and crash recovery, and a roadmap talk covering glTF character animation, reroute nodes and a future shader graph.

🆕 new feature · 🛠️ improvement · 📘 operator · 📝 walkthrough · 🧠 deep dive · 🍿 showcase · 🎯 planned · 💬 discussion · ⚠️ heads-up

Chapters

• 0:00 📝 Warm-up: image-driven points (PointsOnImage, RandomizePoints)
• 3:07 🛠️ Creating presets from the parameter area; pinned thumbnails
• 6:29 🧠 Lens shift: why an off-axis projection is almost free
• 8:31 🧠 Fixing the raymarch perspective-shift artifact (fragment-stage rays)
• 15:59 🧠 Anti-aliasing raymarched surfaces: temporal reprojection, specular AA
• 23:06 🛠️ Fixing the SortPoints flicker (buffer overrun + reset logic)
• 30:41 💬 Car-paint materials: flakes plus clear coat (WorleyNoise)
• 32:29 🆕 Customizable mesh drawing: a scriptable PBR draw operator
• 39:20 📝 Modulating a surface with a distance field (CustomSDF)
• 41:17 📝 Debugging via the generated shader-code output
• 44:42 📝 Contour bands from an animated sphere field
• 49:52 📝 Calling the built-in PBR from your snippet (SetMaterial, PointLight)
• 54:00 💬 Point buffers: a scriptable DrawMeshAtPoints
• 58:44 📝 Shared position inputs, gizmos and the Lights[] array
• 1:02:09 📘 The custom-shader documentation and preset gallery
• 1:08:35 📝 Text to points to instanced cubes, step by step
• 1:10:29 🧠 Per-instance attributes: SelectPointsWithSDF + Points[pointIndex]
• 1:16:28 📝 Color cycling via gradient remap; text resolution gotcha
• 1:19:57 📘 PointsOnImage: density, threshold and performance
• 1:25:06 🧠 Fixing lost vertex colors in CustomVertexShader
• 1:34:20 📝 Endless animated stripes from a repeated plane field
• 1:45:57 📝 Faking a Fresnel rim with SampleGradient
• 1:55:43 📝 Extra textures via material slots; adding an image input live
• 2:05:45 📝 Guarding optional inputs with UseFallbackTexture
• 2:07:50 🎯 Cleaning up the fragment structure for a future shader graph
• 2:17:23 🛠️ Double-click the background to exit to the project list
• 2:18:06 🆕 Automatic backups and crash recovery
• 2:24:50 📝 Git-ignoring meta, temp and render folders
• 2:39:29 🎯 Roadmap: default depth sorting, raymarch step improvements
• 2:42:23 🛠️ Timeline scrubbing, player resolution and bookmark ideas
• 2:48:03 💬 Wireless connections: context variables vs. send/receive
• 2:52:31 🆕 Annotations become nestable sections
• 2:55:15 🎯 Reroute dots and reference-wire overlays
• 3:00:35 🎯 Multi-selection parameter editing plans
• 3:05:35 🎯 NuGet-based operator package distribution
• 3:16:40 🎯 Character animation via glTF: CPU skinning first, then GPU
• 3:29:02 ⚠️ Bug: reusing one custom field twice in a combine
• 3:36:27 ⚠️ The default environment outshines custom lights (SetEnvironment)
• 3:44:20 💬 Fixed shaders vs. uber-shaders; the material-system future
• 3:49:15 🎯 The envisioned node-based shader graph