Procedural textures

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Import recipes from @pibbl/core/textures, included in your @pibbl/core installation. It provides ReactionDiffusion for living, paintable surfaces and ProceduralTexture for seeded marble, paper, and cellular materials. Both participate in Pibbl scheduling, layout, clipping, filters, and resource disposal.

Shared fills and animated parameters

useTexture mounts one resource that can supply several fills or strokes in its owning root. The four field generators use WASM internally; configuration stays ordinary TypeScript. There is no engine switch or separate animation loop.

import { Rectangle, useTexture } from "@pibbl/core";
import { marble } from "@pibbl/core/textures";

function Material({ detail }: { detail: number }) {
  const surface = useTexture(marble({ detail }), {
    resolution: { width: 256, height: 160 },
  });
  return <Rectangle style={{ width: 640, height: 400, fill: surface }} />;
}

Pass a signal’s .get() value from a component to animate detail. Field parameters reuse existing memory; changing resolution replaces it. Use surface.paint(...) for repeat/stretch placement. Palette updates recolor without regenerating shape.

Stir existing ink

A reactionDiffusion resource accepts movement as well as paint:

ink.send({ type: "stir", u: 0.5, v: 0.5, du: 0.02, dv: -0.01, radius: 20 });

The center and displacement are normalized to the texture dimensions. Radius is in texture cells. Stir moves existing ink with smooth falloff, while paint plants new nuclei. Both work with the reaction paused. Spots can settle toward an unchanging pattern; the stripes preset and moving disturbances create a more active surface.

Read a physics body’s committed position in useReaction, compute the displacement from its previous position, and send it to the texture. Reset that previous position on initial placement or teleport. The body and texture keep separate WASM memories; only small movement messages connect them. This is a texture response to motion, not a fluid simulation or a new physics solver.

Try Stirred Ink: pause the reaction to isolate movement, or stop stirring to watch the reaction alone. Animation also changes the three static materials above the ink.

A living background

import { Group, Text } from "@pibbl/core";
import { ReactionDiffusion, texturePalettes } from "@pibbl/core/textures";

function Card() {
  return (
    <Group>
      <ReactionDiffusion
        seed={42}
        preset="stripes"
        resolution={{ width: 256, height: 160 }}
        palette={texturePalettes.porcelain}
        brush={false}
        pointerEvents="none"
        style={{ width: 640, height: 400 }}
      />
      <Text style={{ x: 24, y: 24, font: "32px Georgia", fill: "#172955" }}>
        A living background
      </Text>
    </Group>
  );
}

Put decorative textures before content in paint order and opt them out of pointer participation. Wrap the background in Clip when it needs a shaped boundary. The simulation resolution stays small even when the display grows. A second mounted component has its own simulation. To share a live source across elements, use a useTexture resource as shown above.

Painting and controls

ReactionDiffusion paints by default. Its brush radius is measured in simulation cells and strength is between zero and one. Pause with paused; painting continues to work while paused. Increment resetRevision to repeat the current seed without remounting. Changing seed, preset, or resolution also resets. Display resizing and palette changes preserve the pattern. Use .get() when passing signal-driven configuration from your component.

No separate animation loop is needed. Fixed numerical steps follow Pibbl frames, with bounded catch-up after long gaps. Seeded repeatability depends on the same step count and ordered painting history, not just elapsed wall time. There is no free arbitrary-time seeking.

Try Living Ink.

Reproducible materials

import { ProceduralTexture } from "@pibbl/core/textures";

const paper = (
  <ProceduralTexture
    kind="paper"
    seed={24}
    scale={6}
    detail={0.65}
    palette={["#e7dcc6", "#fff8e9"]}
    pointerEvents="none"
    style={{ width: 640, height: 400 }}
  />
);

Select marble, paper, or cellular. Change scale and detail to regenerate shape; change palette to recolor the stored field. A “new variation” control changes the seed. Static textures request no continuing animation frames. Palettes contain 2–16 opaque #RRGGBB colors. All three materials tile seamlessly in both axes. Noise lattices, grain, and cellular neighbors wrap, and opposite raster edges match. Feature counts round to whole periods where necessary.

Try Material Lab.

Use the output as a fill or mask

Both components accept a render callback. It receives a saved Canvas 2D context in logical display units, plus the generated source, a lazy alpha mask, and both display and texture dimensions. Reuse the same source within this callback without rerunning its generator.

import { ProceduralTexture } from "@pibbl/core/textures";

const repeated = (
  <ProceduralTexture
    kind="cellular"
    seed={12}
    pointerEvents="none"
    style={{ width: 640, height: 400 }}
    render={(context, texture) => {
      context.fillStyle = context.createPattern(texture.source, "repeat")!;
      context.fillRect(0, 0, texture.width, texture.height);
    }}
  />
);

For an artwork reveal, draw your artwork, set context.globalCompositeOperation = 'destination-in', and draw texture.mask to the display rectangle. The alpha mask reflects current field intensity and can recede as well as grow. It does not accumulate reveal history.

Sources are read-only borrows for the synchronous callback. Do not retain, resize, transfer, or dispose them. Copy into an application-owned Canvas if you need a still image. Callbacks cannot return promises, invoke hooks, or write signals. Pibbl restores Canvas state and composes the result normally. The hit region remains the allocated rectangle; remapping the image in a custom presenter does not remap pointer painting. Core Image still takes a URL and Clip still takes a path.

Try Growing Reveal.

Open the interactive workbench

Implementation guidance for agents

Read the Textures and reaction-diffusion companion for ownership, adaptation, failure modes, and verification. Agent start provides the version-selection workflow.

Documentation version

Documentation built with @pibbl/core 0.0.2, revision 2dccb19. ALPHA — NOT FOR PRODUCTION USE.