Surface Floater

Surface Floater is a compact WebGL artwork from Lusion: thousands of blocks gather around a 3D bear while a custom physics system keeps the swarm moving and separated. It is as much studio process demo as digital sculpture, with a video fallback for incompatible devices.

What is Surface Floater?

The finished piece turns a technical problem into a peculiar visual object. Lusion began with a Houdini prototype, packed signed-distance-field data into an image, and rebuilt the motion for real-time WebGL. Curl noise keeps the blocks wandering; GPU collision work keeps the coat from collapsing into one untidy clump. The result is a useful peek at how a glossy browser experiment travels from mood board to prototype to production without making the machinery feel like homework.

What you can do there

• View a physics-driven field of blocks surrounding a 3D form

Why we picked it

Surface Floater has a satisfying double life: from a distance it is a strange, furry-looking digital sculpture, while up close it is a tidy demonstration of graphics tricks solving one concrete problem. The current site also preserves its own making-of trail instead of hiding the clever bits backstage.

How to get the most from it

Give the page a moment to load on a WebGL-capable device and treat it as a short visual study rather than a task to finish. If the site reports an incompatible device, use its linked Vimeo rendering and the production article for the full technical story.

Good to know

The artwork depends on real-time WebGL and includes continuous motion. Current controls, reduced-motion support, mobile behavior, audio, and performance were not verified. Lusion's 2017 article predates the June 2018 Chrome Experiments listing, so an exact launch date is intentionally omitted.

Who made it, and when?

Lusion Ltd is the credited creator or organization.