Material Studies / No. 029

PlushWhale.

No thoughts. Just krill.
One very round ocean friend.
Please squish responsibly.

WEBGPU · STARTING

HandGrab a fluke and gently pull.

Mass
≈—g
Volume
—% of rest
Beat
0/min
Krill gulps
0clouds

Illustrative scale: 1 unit ≈ 10 cm. Fibrefill at 0.03 g/cm³; body volume is measured live over every tetrahedron.

Inside the experiment

Stuffing, not a skeleton

A single smooth-blended signed-distance solid, extracted with surface nets, is embedded in a hexahedral lattice. — stuffing particles and — tetrahedra run at 60 Hz with six XPBD substeps. Co-rotational cell shape matching supplies softness; tetrahedral volume constraints keep the stuffing full. Native WebGPU draws the result.

The flukes go up and down

No bones and no animation rig. A travelling gradient of lengthwise rest strain stretches the top and underside of each cell in turn. It arrives later and grows stronger toward the tail, bending the actual lattice vertically. A smaller sideways strain steers turns; only the head receives a weak posture pull. Turn Circle off to study its three-quarter pose.

A coat you can comb

— alpha-to-coverage fur shells, 4× MSAA, procedural strands, Kajiya–Kay highlights and directional velvet shading. Combing stores the lie in material space, so brush marks follow the deforming fabric. The tiny glass eyes remain rigid; the red-lined lower jaw opens on a render-time hinge.

A little breath of felt

Every ten seconds, a burst of fluffy pom-poms rises from the embroidered blowhole, falls, bounces and fades. Feed a cloud of felt krill and the whale follows it, opens wide, gulps and celebrates with another fountain. Hold a fluke for an extra wriggle; let go for a porpoising dive.

Drag empty space to orbit. Scroll or pinch to zoom; a second finger twists a held specimen. Space pauses. F feeds, D dives, G gulps, S spouts, R resets. No downloads, textures or network requests.