a friend of mine (https://buff.ly/44uS7rh ) had an issue with three.js' effect composer. after discussing the issue, I told him that building his own pipeline would be tedious to set up & horrible to maintain but very insightful.
I gave it a spin & it was tedious & horrible but very insuightful.
the source code for the video is here: https://buff.ly/3OhIeHX