# Balloons

> Balloons: mirror-foil balloon sculptures that inflate, crease and settle in a coloured studio, pumped by a long press. A real-time WebGPU experiment by Luis Bizarro.

Nine Mylar foil balloons, hearts, stars, orbs, a flower and a cloud, float in a clump above the floor of a candy-pink studio, floor and cyclorama in one colour: every balloon is pulled towards the middle, so they press together, the foil flattens where they touch and they keep bumping each other as they drift. Each balloon is a real cloth simulation on the GPU: two flat sheets of nearly inextensible foil sewn at the seam and inflated by an internal gas pressure, so the outline pulls in, the seams crimp and wrinkles form where the foil is short of material. Press and hold a balloon to pump it: it swells and tightens. Drag to pull it out of the clump or push it into the others; it drifts back. Letting go of a long press lets a little air out with a wobble. Clicking the empty studio changes the colours: candy pink, cobalt, lime or orange, with the foils recoloured to match. Every balloon is rendered as mirror foil reflecting the studio: long softbox strips with coloured gels, the coloured floor and walls and the other balloons, with Fresnel, a thin-film iridescence that comes and goes in patches, on creases and at grazing angles, crimp and crinkle normals, soft contact shadows, temporal antialiasing and AgX tone mapping.

- Live: https://balloons.bizar.ro/ (needs WebGPU: a recent Chrome, Edge or Safari)
- Desktop apps: https://balloons.bizar.ro/downloads/Balloons-macOS.zip, https://balloons.bizar.ro/downloads/Balloons-Windows.zip, https://balloons.bizar.ro/downloads/Balloons-Linux.tar.gz
- Built with: Raw WebGPU and WGSL, TypeScript and Vite.
- After: ManvsMachine's "Squarespace x Jeff Koons: The Art of Inflation", Ben Fearnley's inflated typography and Chris Labrooy's inflated sculptures.
- Author: Luis Bizarro, creative technologist and real-time 3D developer for the web

## Author

Luis Bizarro builds real-time 3D for the web with WebGL and WebGPU: shaders, interactive scenes and award-winning creative websites. His work includes Apple, Airbnb, Active Theory, National Design Studio, UNIT9 and independent studios.

- [Portfolio](https://bizar.ro/): every project and experiment
- [Portfolio for agents](https://bizar.ro/llms.txt)
- Contact: luis@bizar.ro