Liquid panels for React, rendered in WebGL on canvas, inspired by Apple's Liquid Glass design. The <Plasma> panel looks and behaves like liquid, with surface tension that fuses on contact with other panels. Anything visible behind the panel is refracted. And for layout convenience, the panels ultimately snap to a grid layout. The library is a work in progress, extracted from the Crux Garden project, but it seemed useful enough to share in its current form.

Playground and Docs · Workspace example

Status: 0.3.0. Core is stable and tested, but the API may change.

npm install @cruxgarden/plasma-ui

Zero dependencies, except for React. Best on desktop: the effect is GPU-heavy and does not run well on mobile.

import { PlasmaProvider, Plasma } from "@cruxgarden/plasma-ui";

export function App() {
  return (
    <PlasmaProvider mood="tidal">
      <Plasma as="header" lean={false}>
        My App
      </Plasma>
      <Plasma draggable>
        <h3>Inbox</h3>
      </Plasma>
    </PlasmaProvider>
  );
}

examples/workspace demonstrates how the library can be used for a real-world dashboard layout.

| material | MaterialName | "plasma" | What the surfaces are made of: plasma, crystal, metal, wood, stone or cloud. Every material shares the same geometry, springs and fusing and differs only in how it is shaded - see examples/materials | | lightDir | [number, number, number] | up-left, front | Where the one light comes from. Every opaque material reads it, so two of them on a page agree about the sun | | roughness | number | 0.28 | Surface finish for metal: 0 is a mirror, 1 is chalk | | anisotropy | number | 0 | How far a highlight stretches along the grain. Brushed metal and varnished wood both want it | | edge | number | 0 | How far the outline is displaced from its rounded box, in CSS px. A rounded rectangle is right for a liquid and wrong for most else: stone chips, cloud billows, cut metal does neither | | edgeScale | number | 0.01 | Size of that displacement, in cycles per px: small is billows, large is chips | | edgeSharpness | number | 0 | 0 rolls the displaced edge, 1 breaks it into flats and points | | thickness | number | 18 | How thick a panel is as a solid, in CSS px. The marched materials light a body of this depth rather than shading a flat card | | tension | number | 0 | Surface tension: how hard the material pulls its own shape toward a bead, and how eagerly two of them merge. mercury runs high | | pointerDrop | boolean | true | Liquid drop that follows the pointer | | pointerPull | boolean | true | The surface swells toward the pointer as it nears an edge. Was part of pointerDrop; its own switch now, so the material still answers the pointer with the bead off | | ambientDrops | boolean | false | Decorative orbiting drops | | grid, magnet | number | 24, 40 | Snap grid size and edge latch distance | | quality | number | 1.25 | Maximum canvas pixel ratio | | freezeOnScroll | boolean | false | Touch devices only: pin the last drawn frame to the page through a fling and resume when the scrolling stops | | maxSurfaces | number | 16 | Visible surface budget, compiled into the shaders; changing it rebuilds them, and higher costs GPU time | | zIndex | number | -1 | Canvas stacking order | | canvas | boolean | true | false: render <PlasmaCanvas /> yourself to choose where the element sits and how it is styled |

Accepts all HTML attributes, plus the following:

Everything else you pass goes to the rendered element. PlasmaProps<C> is the full prop type for <Plasma as={C}>; PlasmaOwnProps is just the table above, if you need to wrap Plasma in a component of your own.

Drag ignores presses on buttons, links, inputs, and anything marked data-plasma-nodrag.

usePlasmaRuntime() is the one to reach for when you only need pulse: its value is stable, so a component reading it is not re-rendered every time a styling prop on the provider changes. usePlasma() is the convenient one and re-renders on any change.

The provider renders the canvas itself unless you pass canvas={false}, in which case render <PlasmaCanvas /> wherever you want the element to live:

<PlasmaProvider canvas={false}>
  <div className="page-backdrop" />
  <PlasmaCanvas zIndex={0} className="field" />
  <main>...</main>
</PlasmaProvider>

It takes className, style and zIndex. Note that this places and styles the element; the renderer still draws the whole viewport. Confining the field to a container is roadmap work, not something this prop does.

The material is one canvas behind everything, so a dialog above a scrim, or a menu above the pane it opened from, could never be plasma. Two props make a second provider possible on top of the first. The ground keeps its frames (preserveDrawingBuffer) and hands its canvas out; the overlay draws with a clear ground (ground="clear"): transparent outside its surfaces, only the surfaces, their shadows and rims drawn, and what they refract is the ground canvas passed as background, sampled exactly so it lines up with the page.

// The ground, once, behind the app.
<PlasmaProvider mood="tidal" preserveDrawingBuffer canvas={false}>
  <PlasmaCanvas zIndex={-1} className="ground" />
  <App />
</PlasmaProvider>

// A dialog: its own provider inside its own stacking context, the canvas
// between the scrim and the panel, the panel registered on it.
function Dialog({ children }) {
  const ground = document.querySelector("canvas.ground");
  return (
    <div className="dialog-root">            {/* position: fixed; inset: 0 */}
      <div className="scrim" />
      <PlasmaProvider ground="clear" background={ground} canvas={false}
        pointerDrop={false} grain={0} glow={0} maxSurfaces={2}>
        <PlasmaCanvas style={{ position: "absolute", zIndex: 1 }} />
        <Plasma className="panel" elevation={0.7} style={{ zIndex: 2 }}>
          {children}
        </Plasma>
      </PlasmaProvider>
    </div>
  );
}

Each overlay is a full render pass while it is open, at the same size as the ground, plus one texture upload of the ground canvas per frame. Mount it with the dialog and unmount it with the dialog; nothing runs while none is open. The page under the scrim is not in the sample - WebGL cannot read the DOM - but the scrim has already dimmed it to the field. Give the panel no fill, border or shadow of its own: the rim is its edge and the elevation its shadow.

A surface forms in over about a quarter second when it registers (formSpeed scales it, formIn={false} skips it, and formOut runs the same spring backwards when a surface is removed). Content drawn on top of it from the first frame looks as if it arrived before its panel, so the form-in is observable: the element carries data-plasma-forming (FORMING_ATTR) while it runs and dispatches plasmaforming then plasmaformed (FORMING_EVENT, FORMED_EVENT; bubbling, detail.id). Under reduced motion there is no form-in: no attribute, and plasmaformed at once. <Plasma> wraps the events as onForming / onFormed.

/* hold the contents back, then fade them in once the material has arrived */
[data-plasma-forming] > * { opacity: 0; transition: none; }
.panel > * { transition: opacity 160ms ease-out; }

<Plasma onFormed={() => setReady(true)}>{ready && <Contents />}</Plasma>

Six things give the material a look of its own, and each is a separate control, so "plain glass, nothing but the lens" is a configuration rather than a fork:

<PlasmaProvider
  rim={0} // the iridescent edge
  highlight={0} // the specular that follows the pointer
  shimmer={0} // the sheen drifting across the body
  glow={0} // the halo cast on the background - visible even at elevation 0
  wash={0} // the material's own tint on what you see through it
  grain={0} // film grain on the background
  edgeLine={0.35} // a hairline is usually still wanted: it is what reads as an edge
  refraction={1.5}
  dispersion={1.6}
/>

The Aqua tab in the playground is exactly this, with all six sliders live next to it.

Two of these answer questions that come up often: the faint rainbow that never went away no matter how far rim came down is shimmer, and the soft light still hugging a panel at elevation={0} is glow - it is cast by the plasma, not by the shadow, which really is off at 0.

import type { Mood } from "@cruxgarden/plasma-ui";

const dusk: Mood = {
  colors: ["#0b0816", "#3b2a6b", "#f0a868"],
  blend: 40,
  spring: { stiffness: 150, damping: 14 },
};

Each panel undulates like a Slinky when moving. Three properties control this movement: viscosity, stretch, and flow.

<PlasmaProvider viscosity={0.1} stretch={1.3} flow={0.6} />  // water
<PlasmaProvider viscosity={0.85} stretch={1.8} />            // honey
<PlasmaProvider stretch={0} />                               // the plasma tracks panels exactly

NOTE: flow ripples the outline, so leave it at 0 whenever flush edges should stay perfectly straight.

// solid cyan rim, a bit wider, no pointer highlight
<PlasmaProvider rimColor="#5fd4ff" rimWidth={1.6} highlight={0} />

// each panel's rim follows its own tint
<PlasmaProvider rimColor="tint">
  <Plasma tint="#ff5fa2" opacity={0.3} />
</PlasmaProvider>

// plain plasma: no colored rim, just the edge line
<PlasmaProvider rim={0} />

• Use Plasma for container components: panels, docks, cards, dialogs. Components should be nested inside.
• Place surfaces together or further apart than the Blend distance. Smaller gaps render as liquid bridging them.
• Up to maxSurfaces (default 16) draw at once; offscreen panels are skipped first, and the library warns in the console when it has to drop any. Two render passes loop over every slot per pixel, so set this value only as high as you need. Changing it recompiles the shaders, so change it when the layout changes, not per frame.
• Lean and Pulse use the CSS translate and scale properties, and Drag uses transform. Avoid setting these properties on Plasma elements yourself.
• prefers-reduced-motion disables Lean, Pulse, the pointer Drop, and Spring - and the form-in, so plasmaformed fires at once.
• A second provider above a scrim (ground="clear") is a full extra render pass; mount it with the dialog and unmount it with the dialog.

Ordered by priority:

1. Layers - panels that will stack instead of fusing. A dialog above a scrim is possible today with a second provider (above a scrim); true stacking inside one canvas is still to come.
2. Drag handles and resize - will add a handle prop for dragging, so panel content can be fully interactive. Also, edge resizing with grid snapping.
3. Scroll clipping - plasma confined to scrollable containers.
4. Pluggable Backgrounds - colors, images, and live canvas/video shipped in 0.1 (background prop); custom shaders are next.
5. Shapes and Orientation - non-rectangular outlines, rotation...etc.

Contributions welcome for any of these - see CONTRIBUTING.md.

Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Safari 16.4+ (WebGL2). In non-supported browsers, Plasma renders as a CSS frosted panel and all layout, drag, and snap behavior still works.

Use it on the desktop. Every pass is full-viewport, so the cost scales with the canvas, and phones pay it at a device pixel ratio the effect does not need. It runs on mobile - resolution drops past a pixel budget, and freezeOnScroll pins the last frame through a fling - but it is not where this belongs.

Server rendering works: surfaces come out as the CSS fallback with no layout effect warnings, and the canvas takes over on hydration.

npm install
npm run build          # library → dist/
npm run build:site     # docs + playground → site/dist/index.html
npm run build:example  # workspace example → examples/workspace/dist/index.html
npm run build:pages    # both, in the layout GitHub Pages serves → site/dist/
npm test               # snap-logic tests
npm run verify         # typecheck + tests + build, the gate CI runs

Every page is a single self-contained HTML file, so you can open one straight from disk. scripts/build-page.mjs is the one builder they share.

Pushing to main deploys npm run build:pages to GitHub Pages:

• Site: https://cruxgarden.github.io/plasma-ui/
• Workspace example: https://cruxgarden.github.io/plasma-ui/examples/workspace/

Releases go to npm from a local machine, the same way the Crux Garden CLI does — see PUBLISH.md.

• Crux Garden - the project Plasma UI was originally built for.

Using it in something? Add yours in a PR.

Contributions are welcome - bug reports, fixes, and roadmap features alike.

1. Fork the repo and create a branch from main.
2. npm install, make your change, and keep npm test and npm run typecheck green.
3. Rebuild the docs site (npm run build:site) and click through the five nav configurations - it's the integration test.
4. For visual changes, include before/after screenshots in the PR.
5. Open a pull request with a short description of what changed and why.

See CONTRIBUTING.md for the code layout and a list of known gaps that make good first projects. By contributing, you agree that your contributions will be licensed under the MIT license.

Plasma UI is built on well-known graphics and simulation techniques:

• Blobby surfaces / metaballs - the fuse-on-contact behavior descends from Jim Blinn's A Generalization of Algebraic Surface Drawing (1982).
• Signed distance fields - the material is drawn with 2D SDFs combined by smooth minimum, per Inigo Quilez's 2D distance functions and smooth minimum articles; the procedural background uses his fBM construction.
• Spring integration - panel motion uses semi-implicit Euler with fixed substeps, in the spirit of Glenn Fiedler's Integration Basics.
• The optical treatment (refraction, dispersion, frost) is an original WebGL take on the direction popularized by Apple's Liquid Glass material.

MIT