Metal Orbs, animated React component

Two liquid-metal metaballs shaded per pixel with a fake chrome reflection on a 2D canvas. They bulge toward each other and pool when they meet; switch between joined, apart and orbit, or drag the cool orb around.

Pro
Shaders

Play with it

Move the controls and watch it change. Copy code gives you a snippet with only the props you changed.

Drag inside to pull the cool orb around.

Props

Prop	Type	Default	What it does
width	number	440	Canvas width in px.
height	number	280	Canvas height in px.
autoplay	boolean	false	Cycles joined, orbit and apart by itself until someone interacts.

Add it to your project

Prepare your project

You need Tailwind CSS and the @/import alias. If shadcn isn't set up yet, initialise it once:

npx shadcn@latest init

Then add the Nexus registry to your components.json (the registries key is the part that matters):

{
  "$schema": "https://ui.shadcn.com/schema.json",
  "style": "default",
  "rsc": true,
  "tsx": true,
  "tailwind": {
    "css": "src/app/globals.css",
    "baseColor": "neutral",
    "cssVariables": true,
    "prefix": ""
  },
  "aliases": {
    "components": "@/components",
    "utils": "@/lib/utils",
    "ui": "@/components/ui",
    "lib": "@/lib",
    "hooks": "@/hooks"
  },
  "registries": {
    "@nexus-labs": "https://www.nexus-ui.com/api/registry/{name}"
  }
}

2
Add the component
Run this from your project root. It adds the component, the utilities it uses and its packages.
```
npx shadcn@latest add @nexus-labs/metal-orbs
```
3
Check what was added
With the standard aliases, these files land in your project:
components/
metal-orbs/
index.ts
metal-orbs.tsx
4
Copying by hand? Install the packages
Skip this if you used the command above.
```
npm install framer-motion
```

Use it in a page

Import it and render it. The Code tab above has the full example.

// app/page.tsx
import { MetalOrbs } from "@/components/metal-orbs";

export default function Page() {
  return (
    <main>
      <MetalOrbs />
    </main>
  );
}

MetalMetal Orbs, animated React component

Play with it

Props

More shaders

Metal Orbs, animated React component