Shady

A Metal shader playground for iOS, built with SwiftUI and MetalKit. Explore 16 procedural visual effects rendered in real-time on the GPU.

Features

• 16 Shader Effects – From simple sine waves to complex particle systems
• Pure Metal/SwiftUI – No external dependencies
• Touch Interaction – Shader 12 responds to touch input
• Portfolio-Ready – Clean, well-documented codebase

Shader Gallery

#	Effect	Description
01	Sine Wave	Animated color pattern
02	Swirl	Color distortion effect
03	Metallic Liquid	Reflective distortion
04	Bouncing Wave	Dynamic wave colors
05	Metaballs	Animated blob shapes (SDF)
06	Glowing Star	Metaball star effect
07	Northern Lights	Noise-based aurora
08	Rotating Stars	Spinning star shapes
09	Checker Strobe	Animated checker pattern
10	Raindrops	Glass raindrop effect
11	Fireworks	Particle explosions
12	Liquid Wave	Interactive silvery liquid
13	Clouds	Procedural drifting clouds (fBm)
14	Lava Lamp	Metaball simulation
15	Lightning	Dynamic bolt effect
16	Warp Drive	Hyperspace starfield

Requirements

• iOS 18.0+
• Xcode 16+
• Device with Metal support

Getting Started

1. Clone the repository
2. Open Shady.xcodeproj in Xcode
3. Build and run on a device or simulator
4. Tap Next Shader to cycle through effects

Architecture

The app uses three rendering patterns to demonstrate different Metal/SwiftUI integration approaches:

Pattern A: Simple MTKView Subclass

Shaders 01–05, 08–09 override draw(_ rect:) directly.

Pattern B: Coordinator-Based

Shaders 06, 07, 12 use a UIViewRepresentable with a Coordinator class as MTKViewDelegate.

Pattern C: Self-Delegating MTKView

Shaders 10–11, 13–16 have the MTKView subclass conform to MTKViewDelegate itself.

For detailed architecture documentation, see Docs/shady-architecture-overview.md.

Project Structure

Shady/
├── ShadyApp.swift           # App entry point
├── Views/
│   ├── ContentView.swift    # Main navigation (shader carousel)
│   └── ShaderView01–16.swift # Individual shader views
├── Shaders/
│   └── Shaders1–16.metal    # Metal shader files
└── Docs/
    ├── shady-architecture-overview.md
    └── shady-cleanup-plan.md

License

Unlicensed experiment.

Author

Junaid Dawud