IrisBackgroundsSpot Gel
Spot Gel
A theatrical gel of fine vertical stripes lit from within — rust rim, gold ring, near-white core, black past the edge.
Spot Gel
One held circle of light on a pure black ground: fine vertical gel stripes running the full spot, coloured by a radial ramp underneath them — near-white at the centre, out through gold and amber to a rust rim, feathered to black past the edge. The stripes are fixed to the x-axis alone rather than fanning from the centre, so the piece reads as a printed gel held in front of a lamp, not rays radiating from a point.
The lamp leans a few percent toward the cursor, eased, the way a held light drifts toward a hand near it; with no pointer it idles on a slow, barely-there orbit so a frozen frame still reads as a struck light rather than a flat target. Fixed warm palette, not the token ramp — the rust-to-gold run lives nowhere in the accent ramp, so the CSS floor carries the colour.
Install
No installation needed — self-contained, paste-in code.
Usage
Drop it straight into a page.
import { SpotGelField } from "./SpotGelField";
export default function Example() {
return (
// Fills its nearest positioned ancestor (it renders itself `absolute
// inset-0`) — give it a sized, relatively positioned box.
<div className="relative isolate h-[32rem] w-full overflow-hidden rounded-2xl">
<SpotGelField />
</div>
);
}Component
The real source, exactly as it ships — multiple files, kept together.
"use client";
import { useEffect, useRef } from "react";
import { mountShaderSurface } from "@/lib/shader-surface";
/**
* A live WebGL spotlight, built to one photographed reference: a circle of
* fine vertical gel stripes on a pure black ground, its hue walking between
* a saturated orange and a saturated yellow-green (never blue — every
* stripe's blue channel sits at zero) as it crosses the beam, brightness
* falling off radially to black at the rim, and a near-white core taking
* over the middle where the stripes wash out under direct light.
*
* The stripes are a fixed spatial frequency along x only (not radial
* spokes), so the banding reads as a flat, printed gel sitting in front of
* the light rather than rays fanning from a point — the radial falloff and
* the white core are what actually carry the spotlight's shape; the stripes
* are a texture riding on top of it.
*
* One of the reusable background fields (`RakeField`, `SolarFanField`,
* `ShaftField`). Drop it into any `position: relative`/`isolate` parent — it
* fills the box. Built on `lib/shader-surface.ts`, so every degradation path
* is already handled: no WebGL, a blocked or lost context, a hidden tab, or
* `prefers-reduced-motion` all leave the CSS `.iris-spotgelfield__floor`
* underneath visible (a still composed frame in the same palette, never a
* blank box).
*
* Fixed warm/green palette, not the token ramp — the gel's orange-to-
* chartreuse run lives nowhere in the accent ramp, so the CSS floor carries
* the colour rather than a live token read (same contract as `RakeField` /
* `AuroraVeil`).
*
* The pointer leans the spot a few percent toward itself, eased, the way a
* held lamp drifts toward a hand near it. With no pointer the spot idles on
* a slow, barely-there drift so a frozen frame still reads as a struck light
* rather than a flat printed circle.
*
* Reading guard: when `guardSelector` resolves to an element, the field
* measures that block every frame and clamps its own luminance under a
* ceiling inside that region (hue and saturation untouched), so copy laid
* over the field holds WCAG AA with no overlay layer. `null` (the default)
* turns the guard off — for decorative use where nothing sits on top.
*/
/* Palette, sRGB 0–1, read straight off the reference photograph's pixels
(sampled per-radius and per-stripe-phase, not eyeballed). See the note
above — no blue in the stripe hue at any radius. */
const PALETTE: Record<string, [number, number, number]> = {
u_black: [0.0, 0.0, 0.0],
u_orange: [0.81, 0.56, 0.02],
u_chartreuse: [0.84, 0.91, 0.04],
u_core: [0.9, 0.91, 0.87],
};
const FRAG = `
uniform vec2 u_res;
uniform float u_time;
uniform float u_scale;
uniform vec3 u_pointer; /* x, y (0 bottom .. 1 top), presence 0..1 */
uniform vec3 u_black; /* past the rim, and what the radial falloff darkens toward */
uniform vec3 u_orange; /* one end of the stripe hue swing */
uniform vec3 u_chartreuse; /* the other end of the stripe hue swing */
uniform vec3 u_core; /* the near-white centre the stripes wash out into */
/* Reading region for the contrast guard: xy = centre (uv, y up),
zw = half-extent. Measured from the live copy block every frame.
u_guard is 0 when the guard is off. */
uniform vec4 u_readA;
uniform float u_guard;
/* How many gel stripes cross the spot's width — fit to the reference's own
stripe pitch (about 1/22 of the frame width), not a round number. */
const float STRIPES = 16.3;
void main() {
vec2 res = u_res / u_scale;
vec2 uv = gl_FragCoord.xy / u_scale / res; /* 0..1, y up */
float aspect = res.x / res.y;
vec2 P = (uv - 0.5) * vec2(aspect, 1.0);
/* the lamp leans a few percent toward the pointer, eased by its own
presence so it settles back to dead centre with nothing near it; with
no pointer it idles on a slow orbit so a frozen frame is never a
perfectly static, flat-printed circle */
vec2 idleC = vec2(sin(u_time * 0.055), cos(u_time * 0.047)) * 0.018;
vec2 ptrP = (u_pointer.xy - 0.5) * vec2(aspect, 1.0);
vec2 center = mix(idleC, ptrP * 0.06, u_pointer.z);
vec2 Q = P - center;
/* r is in units of frame-height, matching the reference photo's own
radius so the fitted constants below (0.375 / 0.58 / the core's 15.0)
carry over exactly regardless of the box's own aspect ratio. */
float r = length(Q);
/* fine vertical gel stripes, fixed to x alone so they sit in front of the
light rather than fanning from its centre; a slow phase drift keeps a
still frame from reading as a static printed texture. The stripe hue
itself swings between orange and chartreuse at full saturation — no
radial hue change, exactly what the reference does. */
float phase = Q.x * STRIPES + sin(u_time * 0.03) * 0.4;
float wave = 0.5 + 0.5 * sin(phase * 6.28318);
vec3 stripe = mix(u_orange, u_chartreuse, wave);
/* radial brightness: full strength out to r=0.375 (frame-height units),
falling to black by r=0.58 — fitted to the reference's own falloff,
which is a circle notably larger than the frame (so the corners go
black while the top/bottom centre stays lit). */
float bright = 1.0 - smoothstep(0.375, 0.58, r);
vec3 col = stripe * bright;
/* the near-white core the stripes wash out into at the lamp's centre —
a mix toward u_core, not an add, so it desaturates rather than blows
out to a colour the reference never shows */
float core = exp(-r * r * 15.0);
col = mix(col, u_core, core);
col = max(col, 0.0);
/* ---- the reading guard (see RakeField for the full rationale) ---- */
vec2 rd = abs(uv - u_readA.xy) / max(u_readA.zw, vec2(0.02));
float m = mix(max(rd.x, rd.y), length(rd), 0.4);
float guardBand = 1.0 - smoothstep(0.72, 2.1, m);
col = mix(col, holdUnder(col, 0.09), guardBand * u_guard);
col += (bayer8(gl_FragCoord.xy) - 0.5) * (2.2 / 255.0);
gl_FragColor = vec4(col, 1.0);
}
`;
export interface SpotGelFieldProps {
className?: string;
/**
* CSS selector for the block the reading guard should keep readable,
* resolved against `document`. `null` (the default) turns the guard off.
*/
guardSelector?: string | null;
}
export function SpotGelField({ className, guardSelector = null }: SpotGelFieldProps) {
const canvasRef = useRef<HTMLCanvasElement>(null);
useEffect(() => {
const canvas = canvasRef.current;
if (!canvas) return;
const guardOn = guardSelector != null;
/* The block the reading guard protects. Looked up once, lazily. */
let guardEl: Element | null | undefined;
const readGuardEl = () => {
if (guardEl === undefined) {
guardEl = guardOn
? document.querySelector(guardSelector as string)
: null;
}
return guardEl;
};
return mountShaderSurface(canvas, {
fragment: FRAG,
uniforms: [...Object.keys(PALETTE), "u_readA", "u_guard"],
onInit: (gl, u) => {
for (const name of Object.keys(PALETTE)) {
if (u[name]) gl.uniform3fv(u[name], PALETTE[name]);
}
if (u.u_readA) gl.uniform4f(u.u_readA, 0.5, 0.5, 0.44, 0.32);
if (u.u_guard) gl.uniform1f(u.u_guard, guardOn ? 1 : 0);
},
onFrame: (gl, u, s) => {
if (!guardOn || !u.u_readA) return;
let cx = 0.5, cy = 0.5, hw = 0.44, hh = 0.32;
const el = readGuardEl();
const { rect } = s;
if (el && rect.width > 0 && rect.height > 0) {
const r = el.getBoundingClientRect();
const padX = rect.width * 0.09;
const padY = rect.height * 0.11;
cx = (r.left + r.width / 2 - rect.left) / rect.width;
cy = 1 - (r.top + r.height / 2 - rect.top) / rect.height;
hw = (r.width / 2 + padX) / rect.width;
hh = (r.height / 2 + padY) / rect.height;
}
gl.uniform4f(u.u_readA, cx, cy, hw, hh);
},
onPainted: () => canvas.setAttribute("data-shader", "on"),
/* No onIdle — same contract as RakeField / SilkField: once painted,
the last frame stays on screen while the surface is parked off-view,
so scrolling away and back does not crossfade to the static floor. A
lost context still clears it below. */
onLost: () => canvas.removeAttribute("data-shader"),
maxPixels: 2_200_000,
dprCap: 1.5,
});
}, [guardSelector]);
return (
<div
className={`absolute inset-0 overflow-hidden${className ? ` ${className}` : ""}`}
aria-hidden="true"
>
<div className="absolute inset-0 [background:radial-gradient(_62%_62%_at_50%_50%,oklch(0.93_0.02_95)_0%,oklch(0.87_0.19_110)_30%,oklch(0.75_0.19_90)_55%,oklch(0.5_0.15_65)_76%,oklch(0_0_0)_92%_),oklch(0_0_0)]" />
<canvas ref={canvasRef} className="absolute inset-0 w-full h-full opacity-0 transition-opacity duration-[--duration-slow] ease-[--ease-standard] data-[shader=on]:opacity-100" />
</div>
);
}Custom work
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