alchemy

A time-based, react parallax framework

The goal of alchemy is to be able to frame-sync layered, parallaxing elements with a scene. As opposed to Apple's infamous [airpods pro]](https://www.apple.com/airpods-pro/) implementation, alchemy sits a high-level to enable deterministic content scrubbing using various means: canvas, video, svg, dom elements etc...

alchemy provides a suite of tools that crunches the math and provides a time-based animation framework in React. Animations are (opaquely) driven by an Anime fork and synced against the current scroll position. Scroll is virtualized to reduce reflow and allow for complex interactions. By virtualizing the parallax elements in the viewport, alchemy achieves a smooth 60fps and avoids jank, even with hundreds of elements

alchemy can SSR seemlessly and initialize on-the-fly once in the web page

Quick Start

import { render } from 'react-dom';
import { Lab, Beaker, animation, useParallax } from 'alchemy';

// define your animation in a simple, declarative style
const anim = animation({
  // time is gauged in seconds. this animation wont
  // start until 1 second in. alchemy will manage
  // the state of the animation if the scroll is before
  // (or after) this animation
  timestamp: 1,
  duration: 1,
  // use shorthand properties, values with units,
  // opacity and more!
  from: { y: '100%', opacity: 0 },
  to: { y: '0%', opacity: 1 },
});

const Content = () => {
  return (
    // everything inside a Beaker is wrapped in a Frame
    // that matches the viewport and stays in-view when
    // the Beaker is active
    <Frame>
      {/*
        useParallax will manage the style for the animation
        no fuss, no interference
        use your own elements, Components or CSS strategy
      */}
      <h1 style={ useParallax(anim) }>
        I am content animated inside react
      </h1>
      {/*
        parallax is a styled-components-esque way of latching
        into the parallax framework outside of react to
        avoid re-renders
      */}
      <parallax.p beaker="content" animation={ anim }>
        I am content animated outside react
      </parallax.p>
    </Frame>
  );
};

const App = () => (
  // Lab is the top-level wrapper to manage parallaxing
  <Lab>
    {/*
      Beakers provides a timeline for your animations and
      allows you to (optionally) define a video
    */}
    <Beaker
      // configurations are defined by breakpoints, allowing
      // responsive settings
      //
      // swap to different settings (or event different videos)
      // based on the viewport width
      name="content"
      breakpoints={ [
        {
          // provide a path to the video and alchemy will 
          // load and cache it
          videoUrl: '/video.mp4',
          // define the width and height of the video and
          // alchemy will scale it to cover the window
          width: 1920,
          height: 1080,
          // the duration of the video, or (if the video isn't
          // defined) the duration of the timeline for the content
          duration: 10,
          // speed up or slow down the speed of the scroll through
          // the timeline without highjacking the browsers' native
          // scroll or interfering with your animation timings!
          scrollScale: 1.5
        }
      ] }
    >
      <Content />
    </Beaker>
  </Lab>
);

render(<App />, document.querySelector('#mount'));