We built the app. Now we're opening the engine.
RenderWave 1.5 is shipped. Under the hood, the Metal 3 engine is getting hungrier — bigger visuals, richer color, tighter timing. Above it, we're opening a workshop for VJs who want to build their own shaders.
Last updated: June 5, 2026
Engine Roadmap
What the Metal 3 engine learns to do next. M1 Max or better. Apple Silicon only. No fragment shaders sneaking into the default catalog.
Bigger Visuals
What the engine can paint
Mesh-Shader Audio Reactivity
BuildingGeometry that pulses to the music at the vertex level, not just the pixel. Crowd-tested on Apple7 silicon.
GPU-Simulated Scenes
BuildingReal Stam stable fluids, particles with physics, and reaction-diffusion as full visuals — not background loops faking it.
Compute Lighting + GI
BuildingSoft shadows, ambient occlusion, and global illumination via compute kernels instead of fragment hacks. Looks like a render. Runs like a club.
Richer Output
What leaves your Mac
HDR Linear Pipeline
BuildingColor stays linear from shader to display. No more gamma-mush on the projector.
10-bit Syphon Publish
BuildingHand off to Resolume or MadMapper in 10-bit. Smoother gradients, no banding on the LED wall.
Frame-Pacing Controller
ResearchingRock-steady 60 at 8K. No more hitches when the bass drops.
Tighter Timing
What stays locked to the track
External Timecode In
ResearchingSMPTE / MTC alongside Ableton Link. For shows where the DAW is not the master clock.
Beat Detector v2
ResearchingMulti-feature onset detection, not just spectral flux. Less guessing, more groove.
Audio-Mesh Deformation
BuildingDeform 3D geometry directly with audio bands. Bass moves vertices; treble moves normals.
Creator Roadmap
Three doors for VJs who want to build their own visuals. Forge writes Metal. Muse describes Metal. rw drives the whole rig from a terminal. All gated behind creator access while we polish.
Forge
The visual shader IDE
Write Metal, See Pixels
Internal alphaA real code editor, live preview window, parameter sliders wired to the running shader. Change a line, watch it render the moment you save.
One-Click Library Ship
Internal alphaValidate runs compile, lint, hazard checks, and health on your shader — the same gates RenderWave uses for built-in visuals. Pass, and it lands in your library.
Workspace That Travels
Internal alphaYour shader is a folder. Move it, share it, version it. No proprietary blob. Just Metal + JSON.
Muse
AI shader generation
Type a Shader Into Existence
Internal alphaDescribe what you want — 'neon rings pulsing to bass,' 'volumetric nebula with god rays' — and RenderWave designs, builds, previews, and validates it.
Budget Cap, Always
Internal alphaYou set the dollar ceiling. Hard caps at every stage. No paid model call happens without a green light from you.
Same Gates as the Catalog
Internal alphaAI output runs the exact same validation as a hand-written shader. Approve before write. Quarantine before ship.
rw
The command line
Drive the App From Terminal
Internal alphaLaunch RenderWave, select shaders, tweak parameters, capture screenshots, swap outputs — all from a single binary. OSC + Apple Events under the hood.
Headless Render
Internal alphaRender any shader to PNG without ever opening the app. Contact sheets, time arrays, parameter overrides. Built for batch workflows.
Agent-Ready
Internal alphaMCP server, Codex bridge, Blender bridge. The same surface our internal agents use to ship the built-in catalog is the one you get.
What we'll never do
Some lines we won't cross, even if the roadmap shifts around them.
No AI slop in the default catalog
Every built-in shader is hand-tuned by humans. AI design ships your shaders into your library — never into ours.
Your originals are sacred
Variants live next to originals. Nothing gets overwritten. A pre-commit hook enforces it at the file-system level.
Same gates, every time
Compile, lint, hazard check, health check, Metal validation. Built-in shaders, your shaders, AI-designed shaders — all pass the same wall.
No phone-home
Your sets are your business. RenderWave does not telemeter your performance, your library, or your hardware.
How a custom shader gets shipped
Same pipeline, whether you wrote it, typed it, or pasted it in. Same gates, same library, same live performance.
Describe or sketch
Type a prompt for Muse. Or open Forge and start writing Metal.
Preview live
Forge renders the moment you save. Muse renders the moment AI codegen returns.
Validate
The same compile + lint + hazard + health gates that ship the built-in catalog.
Ship to your library
Pass the gates and your shader lands in RenderWave next to the built-ins — ready for live use.
Want early access?
Forge, Muse, and the rw CLI are in internal alpha. We open the door in waves — VJs first, shader artists next.