VFX artist builds webcam elemental-mirror demo with Claude in 4 hours, zero hand-written code
Sourcecode12 · reddit · 2026-11-13
A VFX artist shipped "elemental mirror": a single 135KB HTML file where each hand gets fire/ice/water/lightning effects, blowing breath bends flames, and fireballs can be thrown and burst on screen.
- No code written by hand: Claude built it in one 4-hour session across 5 versions from plain-language prompts
- Hand/face/body tracking via Google MediaPipe in-browser; fire, smoke and water are a real GPU fluid simulation (WebGL 2)
- With no depth camera, Claude estimates a depth map from body outline + 3D face mesh to light the scene
- Claude self-tested on a simulated stick figure in a headless browser; real webcam bugs were reported and fixed version by version
- Cost: $35–45 API-equivalent (350K output, 1.3M cache-write, 39M cache-read tokens); Claude also created the repo and enabled GitHub Pages
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