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Abacus Cascade

A wooden counting frame whose glossy beads slide along their rods in rolling waves. Loops perfectly.

3D object, V2 Objects3DSeamless loop, verified101 lines of codev1.0.0

In Machines & clockwork

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Abacus Cascade preview
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Effect controls

Presets

6
7
1

How far each rod lags the one above it.

2

How many times the beads cross the frame in one loop.

The preview runs the same code your AI receives. These settings travel with the hand-off.

View code Sample video (default settings, 2.0 MB)
Info

What it is

A wooden abacus with brass rods and glossy beads. On every rod the beads leave one end one after another, click across and come back, each rod a little out of step with the one above, so a ripple runs down the frame and back again. Choose the number of rods and beads, the bead colours (rainbow, deep, pastel or bone), the wood, how far each rod lags the last, how many crossings a loop holds, the backdrop and whether the camera drifts.

Reuse it in your own idea

  • Finance or maths backdrop: Rainbow beads, walnut.
  • Calm product loop: Bone beads, ebony.
  • Rhythm title: One slow wave.

Which part is reusable

src/abacus-cascade.js is the ingredient your AI reuses. demo.js is only the example scene around it, and uses chrome-material only for the demo.

Good to know

  • The beads slide without friction or collision physics: order is guaranteed by the thresholds, not simulated.
  • The beads are plain flattened spheres without a drilled bore.

Technical details

Technical details
Implementation
Three.js 0.185.1 (WebGL) · ES module src/abacus-cascade.js
Exports
  • createAbacus({ rods?, beads?, palette?, wood?, wave?, cycles? }) => { group, setProgress(progress), dispose() }
  • PALETTES: { rainbow, deep, pastel, bone }
Dependencies (exact)
  • three@0.185.1 (source) — Renderer, geometry and physical materials.
  • chrome-material@1.1.0 (demo) — Studio environment light, backdrop and contact shadow.
  • apw-runtime@1.0.0 (demo) — Demo harness.
How it fits a scene

Coordinates: The frame is 8 wide and as tall as its rods need, centred on the origin and lifted 3.2 above the floor; beads run along x.

Lighting: A warm key light with a shadow map and the studio environment for the glossy clear-coated beads.

Timing: setProgress(progress) sets every bead; frames render in any order.

Output
1080×1080, 30 fps, 12 s · procedural (computed from the frame number) · seamless loop — Every bead's place is a smoothstep of a sine that goes round a whole number of times per loop, and the camera drift is a sine of the loop, so the last frame meets the first.
Tested
Rendered 360 frames on 2026-10-06 in Chrome 154.0.8037.97 headless on Linux 7.0.0-38-generic (x64), Node 22.14.0 (WebGL 2 via SwiftShader (software)). Same frame twice from fresh pages: identical. Loop: Frame 0 vs end state (progress 1): mean |Δ| 0.0000, max |Δ| 0 of 255.
Performance
About 50 instanced beads and a handful of boxes, one shadow map, anti-aliasing. A few milliseconds a frame on an integrated Intel GPU. Software WebGL renders in a second or two a frame.
Export a video yourself
Download the source, then in the folder: npm install npm run render -- abacus-cascade/1.0.0 --out my-video.mp4Needs Node 18+, ffmpeg and Chrome/Chromium. Add --params my-settings.json (from Copy settings) for your own settings.
Version
1.0.0 · sha256:80988871d313db7c… · other versions: 1.0.1
Files
License
MIT. Copyright (c) 2026 AI Pixel Wizard. Released under the MIT License. See LICENSE in this folder. License details
Provenance
Adapted from the owner's threejs-sketches/mechanical-kinetic/abacus-cascade (MIT) and rebuilt for AI Pixel Wizard in October 2026 as an original object: threshold-ordered bead waves on an exact loop, clear-coated instanced beads and a brass-and-wood frame.
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