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RENDERWAVERENDERWAVE

Interface Overview

RENDERWAVE opens into a short animated loading screen while it checks your license and loads the shader catalog, then drops you into a live, rendering window. This page covers what’s on screen and where each control sits.

The top bar

Section titled “The top bar”

A thin bar runs across the top of the window. From left to right:

  • The RENDERWAVE mark, quiet in the corner.
  • SHOW, a menu for switching between shows. A show holds its own presets, sessions, bookmarks, and MIDI mappings, so you can keep separate rigs for separate gigs.
  • The current shader’s name, in a small capsule, so you always know what’s live.
  • A DIM badge, which only appears once the master dimmer is pulled down below full. It shows the exact percentage.
  • A small waveform indicator, which appears while audio capture is running.
  • A BPM readout, showing the tempo RENDERWAVE is currently locked to.

On the right side:

  • UNLOCK FULL VERSION, shown whenever your license isn’t in a fully valid, active state, whether that’s never having activated one, or a license that’s since expired, gone invalid, or hit its machine limit.
  • An FPS readout with a colored dot (green, yellow, or red) so you can see render performance at a glance.
  • Four icon buttons that switch what you’re looking at: a grid icon for Performance, a magnifying glass for the shader browser, a sliders icon for Creator, and a sparkles icon for the effects panel.
  • A gear icon for Settings.
  • A Discord icon, linking out to the community server.

Performance and Creator

Section titled “Performance and Creator”

Two of those icon buttons are the core of how you work in RENDERWAVE:

  • The grid icon switches to Performance, the live surface where you trigger looks.
  • The sliders icon switches to Creator, the workshop where you build and tune those looks.

You’re always in one or the other (with the shader browser and Settings available as overlays on top). The app opens directly into Performance.

How the layout changes

Section titled “How the layout changes”

Performance fills the window with the live rendered preview and lays a grid of saved scenes over it, with the AUTOPILOT panel docked to the right edge. You edit nothing here, you play finished looks. See Performance view.

Creator shrinks the preview into a framed window and opens a full parameter panel down the right side: sequencer, audio routing, parameter sliders, and effects. You build a look here before it ever reaches the Performance grid. See Creator view.

Build in Creator, then play what you built in Performance.

Next steps

Section titled “Next steps”