Expertise
Immersive (3D) Experiences
The browser as a 3D canvas
Most people use a browser to read emails and fill in forms. We use it to build virtual cities, immersive brand worlds, and 3D product experiences that run at 60fps without asking anyone to install anything.
The browser is the most powerful distribution channel for 3D content in the world. It's already on every device. It requires no friction to access. And thanks to WebGL and increasingly WebGPU, it has direct access to the GPU.
That access changes what's possible.
We can render complex 3D geometry with real-time lighting. We can simulate thousands of particles, cloth, and fluid. We can build environments that respond to user input with spatial physics.
The challenge is the craft. Building a 3D experience that genuinely works on real devices, for real users, in real network conditions requires a level of technical obsession most studios don't have.
We prove what's possible.
Real-time 3D and video
A question we get early in almost every project: "can't we just do this with a video?"
You can. But here's what changes.
Pre-rendered video looks incredible because it has no performance constraints. The frames are baked. The lighting is offline-rendered. The textures are full resolution.
But video is passive. It plays. It doesn't respond. It can't know where the user's cursor is, or which product variant they've selected, or what language they're reading in.
Real-time 3D is interactive. The environment responds. The camera can move. The lighting can change. The content can be different for every user. That's a fundamentally different web experience and one that drives dramatically more engagement.
It can however, still look great. For the Inter x Nike product launch, we built a micro landingpage experience for the Inter Milan x Nike home kit with PNG sequences, color animation, and a custom animated scroll-bar, all responding to the user in real time.
3D models and optimisation
A 3D model created for film and a 3D model created for a web experience are different things. Often very different.
Our guidelines for web-ready 3D models:
We run all of our 3D assets through a CDN pipeline that handles conversion, compression, and format negotiation automatically. The right asset format is delivered to the right device without manual intervention.iOS Safari has a 50MB VRAM limit. That number lives in our heads rent-free. Every scene we build is profiled against it.
Lighting, shading, and materials
Real-time lighting is what makes 3D experiences feel alive.
WebGL gives us access to a range of lighting models. We use physically-based rendering (PBR) as a baseline, giving us materials that behave consistently under different lighting conditions. Metal looks like metal. Glass refracts. Rough surfaces scatter light correctly.
Beyond PBR, we write custom shaders for effects that can't be achieved with standard materials. Iridescence. Subsurface scattering. Dissolve transitions. Animated noise-based gradients. Each of these is written in GLSL, the shader language that runs directly on the GPU.
For the Dior: Garden of Dreams WebAR campaign, the visual quality needed to meet Dior's standards. We built custom shaders for the lighting effects, particle systems for the ambient atmosphere, and multiple interactive scenes, all running on a 6-year-old smartphone via WebAR.
It ran smoothly. It looked like Dior.
Physics, particles, and the stuff that makes jaws drop
Physics simulation in real-time 3D adds a layer of believability that pre-scripted animation can't replicate.
Drop a ball and it bounces with the right energy. A cloth drapes and folds naturally. Particles scatter based on airflow simulation.
Particle systems are one of the most expressive tools in our kit. Thousands of individual elements, each with its own position, velocity, and lifecycle, can communicate atmosphere, energy, and movement in a way nothing else does. Sparkles. Smoke. Rain. Confetti. Falling snow.
Yes, we made it snow. In a browser. For Pendragon: Rise of the Merlin, an immersive world where you could explore characters, locations, and clans in a deeply atmospheric 3D environment.
Spatial navigation and world-building
Building a 3D environment is one thing. Making it navigable is another.
Spatial navigation, the way users move through a 3D space, is a design discipline we take seriously. Camera controls, movement speed, collision detection, points of interest: these all have to be designed and built with the same care as a UI.
For Eurovision Village, we built an entire virtual city based on Rotterdam so Eurovision fans worldwide could experience the event without traveling. The navigation had to be intuitive for users who had never interacted with a 3D environment before. No learning curve. No manual. Just explore.
The spatial design of a 3D world directly affects how long people stay and what they discover. A world that rewards curiosity keeps people.
WebAR: 3D in the real world
The natural extension of in-browser 3D is WebAR, placing 3D content in the physical world through the phone's camera.
WebAR is a service we've invested heavily in, both technically and creatively. We've built a proprietary framework on top of 8thWall that handles performance tiering, custom permission flows, multi-locale content, and global hosting. The result is WebAR experiences that run smoothly on a wide range of devices and feel like they were built for each platform individually.
The Dior: Garden of Dreams campaign is the example we're most proud of. A fully stylised, award-winning WebAR campaign with multiple interactive scenes and mini-games, usable at the click of a link.
Read the full technical breakdown: Pushing WebAR to its limits.
Immersive 3D Web Experiences
Immersive 3D experiences in the browser are a legitimate medium for brand storytelling, product launches, and campaign activation. At Merlin, it's a medium we've been building in for a long time.
