Medusa Swarm Field
A bloom of tiny moon jellyfish in a near-black void, with no water in the picture: 600 by default, up to 2000 on the count prop, each one small and far like a bloom seen from a distance. The glass is colourless; the only colour is in the organs glowing inside. The swarm has read your page: it drifts around the content, keeps clear of it, and softly lights the words nearest to it. Move the pointer and a current runs through the bloom; click and a ring of it crosses the swarm.
This is a viberdy Pro component
The live preview, the props panel and the write-up are open to everyone. The full source, the AI prompt and CLI install are part of Pro.
Aerium
Aurelia, 600 specimens
Medium: none
A sea with no sea in it.
Rooms where exactly one thing is wrong. This swarm has read the page, and keeps out of the way of every word.
Props
"use client";
import { useEffect, useRef, useState } from "react";
import type { CSSProperties, ReactNode } from "react";
/**
* MedusaSwarmField: a bloom of luminous jellyfish in a void, each one at 15% of
* its old size (50 to 2000 of them, 600 by default). There is no water
* in the picture, no surface, no floor and no light but their own. Bells are
* dark translucent glass with a fresnel rim and glowing organs; five depth
* layers fade into one deep blue; marine snow drifts through. The one wrong
* thing is that the swarm has read your page: it drifts AROUND the content
* (headlines, paragraphs, buttons), keeps clear of it, and softly lights the
* words nearest to it.
*
* HOW IT IS MADE. Hand-written WebGL2, no dependencies, no matrices (the camera
* looks straight down -z, so projection is a divide):
* - bells: a lathe mesh instanced per jellyfish, in three levels of detail
// ---------------------------------------------------------------
// Full source available with a viberdy Pro subscription.
// https://viberdy.dev/pricing
// ---------------------------------------------------------------
}About this background
This one is a swarm that has read your page. Six hundred small jellyfish hang in a near-black blue void (raise the count prop to 2000), five layers of them fading into fog: the nearest about thirty pixels across, the farthest a few dim pixels, gathered into blooms with clear water between. Each bell is a lathe mesh bent by a pulse: a quick contraction, the margin snapping in, a slow refill, a flared lip of sixteen lappets. The glass is colourless, clear at the apex and milky at the margin; the only colour is in four soft horseshoe organs glowing inside it and a cool rim. Fine tentacles follow through a beat late. Level of detail keeps it light: small bells get fewer strands, fewer segments and a coarser mesh, and a slow-frame governor fades animals out rather than dropping frames. The swarm measures the headings, paragraphs and buttons you place on top, steers round them, and lets the bells near a data-medusa-lit element light it softly. The pointer is a current through the bloom, and a click sends a ring of it across.
Curator’s note
The anomaly is not the jellyfish but what is missing around them: no water, no surface, no floor, no light but their own. Everything else is obedient, so the bells are colourless glass with a cool rim rather than neon, and the colour stays in the organs. The animals are small on purpose: a swarm of tiny bodies reads as a distant bloom and sits behind a UI like atmosphere, where a few large ones read as a demo. The swarm reads the page by measuring its children, which is what makes it feel placed rather than pasted behind the copy. Mark any child data-medusa-lit and it receives --medusa-glow and --medusa-color from the nearest bell; style them however you like.
Pairs well with
Matched on shared tags and category — the entries most likely to be used alongside this one.
Lone Medusa Section
sectionsOne large jellyfish, centred low in a black void, lit only from inside. The bell is dark transparent glass with gonads, canals and frilled oral arms burning through it. Touch a tentacle and light runs up it to the bell; click and it jets upward and sinks back.
Dry Caustic Room
backgroundsA high-key white gallery room, seen into one corner. Rippling water light plays down both walls and across the glossy floor, with soft prismatic fringes, and there is no water anywhere. Touch the pointer to the unseen surface and slow rings spread; the caustics bend around them.
Bearing Flow Field
backgroundsAn ordered crystal of polished steel balls that pours and pools like water across a concrete floor, lit by one low raking lamp. The terraces and ragged edges of the pile are kept on purpose. Drag the pointer through it and it digs a trench that slumps back in; click and a handful of sixty drops.