// PARTICLE PLAYER 04 · LIVE
EMBER
The picture burns. Bright pixels shed embers that rise through a real fluid solver, cooling from white-hot to red, and every bass hit makes it flare.
How it works
EMBER is EMBERFALL from the Lab turned into a video player. It runs the same GPU fluid solver as INK, but here up to 262,144 particles burn instead of melt. Each one sits on its pixel of the picture until it catches: the brighter the pixel, the more often it ignites, and bass hits make the whole frame flare. An ignited particle leaves as an ember carrying its pixel's color, rises through the moving air, cools from white to yellow, orange and red, and then relights its pixel, so the picture is always being rebuilt by fire. Pause and the frame slowly burns away into rising embers. Seeking lights a column of fire at the playhead, tapping the picture sparks a flare where you touched, dragging fans the flames, and when the video ends everything goes up at once.
The palette button cycles fire, plasma, true color and gold. Controls sit in the same glass dock as INK and fade while you watch, with the live particle count and frame rate in the corners. Every control is a real Video.js control with keyboard support and visible focus. The particle count drops on its own if a device can't hold the frame rate, reduced motion stops the burning and holds the picture still, and without WebGL2 float render targets it falls back to the plain video.
Controls
- Space Play or pause
- ← → Seek 10 seconds
- ↑ ↓ Volume
- 0–9 Jump to 0–90%
- M Mute
- F Fullscreen
- 2× tap Sides seek, center goes fullscreen
- Drag Fan the flames
- Tap Spark a flare
- Palette Cycle the fire colors
// THE BRANCH
Particle players. Each one turns the picture into something else.
- LIVE
SPILL
The movie lights the room.
Bias lighting for the web: 48 LEDs behind the TV throw the picture's colors across the wall.
- LIVE
SWARM
The player is made of light.
The video plays untouched inside a black hole, a cherry blossom storm or a murmuration of starlings.
- LIVE
INK
The video, poured into water.
A fluid solver carries the picture. Pause and it melts into technicolor ink.
- LIVE
EMBER
The picture burns.
Bright pixels shed embers that rise through the fluid and relight the frame.
- LIVE
GRAIN CINEMA
Every frame turns to light.
The video as a 3D point cloud you can orbit. The camera flies through it when you seek.
- CONCEPT
MURMURATION
Every cut is a flock.
Tens of thousands of birds settle into the picture, scatter on every scene cut, and regroup into the new shot.
- CONCEPT
GLYPH
Type is the pixel.
The picture drawn in live colored characters on stacked depth layers that tumble apart when you seek.
- CONCEPT
LIQUID CHROME
Mercury that remembers.
Particles that render as liquid metal reflecting the video. They pool when you pause and pull back into the frame on play.