It sounds like you’re quite nearly there actually! One important skill imo is the ability to treat a certain layer of the stack or process like a black box (inp

It sounds like you’re quite nearly there actually! One important skill imo is the ability to treat a certain layer of the stack or process like a black box (inputs and outputs). A fully generalized scene pipeline is layer upon layer of boxes, many of which will be opaque when you start off. How are clouds rendered? Fog? Reflections? Shadows? Ambient light? Each of these areas is an active research topic and you definitely couldn’t hope to understand all of it all at once.