---
layout: post
title: "Faking 3D Elements with CSS"
date: 2020-04-29
---


Although not always practical, creating the illusion that some of your web elements are 3D can be a fun experiment. I set out to see if I was able to create such an illusion with only 2 HTML elements and as little CSS as possible.

This is what I ended up creating:

![Blue 3D orb made out pure CSS](/public/images/css-orb.png)

[Live CodePen Example](https://codepen.io/bradleytaunt/pen/VwvzKyb)


## The HTML

Prepare for your mind to be blown:


    <div class="main-orb">
        <div class="inner-orb"></div>
    </div>


That's it - I wasn't kidding when I said we would use only 2 HTML elements. The `.main-orb` is the core shape (set to 400x400) and the `.inner-orb` is placed on top of it's parent at a slightly smaller size (360x360) - but more on that below in the CSS portion.

## The CSS

First we give the bigger orb element (`.main-orb`) the default styling needed to represent a 2D circle:


    .main-orb {
        background: linear-gradient(#fff 0%, #eee 10%, #2E86FB 50%, #1A237E 100%);
        border-radius: 9999px;
        height: 400px;
        margin: 4rem auto;
        position: relative; /* This is important for the inner orb element later */
        width: 400px;
    }


Next, we include both `:before` and `:after` pseudo elements for our orb's drop shadow. You _could_ do this with a simple `box-shadow` property on the `.main-orb` itself, but I've explained in a previous post why [that's not the best approach](/blog/better-box-shadows.html).


    /* Shared styling for both pseudo elements - Remember DRY */
    .main-orb:before, .main-orb:after {
        border-radius: 200px 200px 9999px 9999px;
        bottom: -10px;
        content:'';
        filter: blur(20px);
        height: 40px;
        position: absolute;
        z-index: -1;
    }

    /* Bigger, lighter shadow */
    .main-orb:before {
        background: rgba(0,0,0,0.4);
        left: 7.5%;
        width: 85%;
    }

    /* Smaller, darker shadow */
    .main-orb:after {
        background: rgba(0,0,0,0.7);
        left: 20%;
        width: 60%;
    }


With our main orb complete we can move on to the `.inner-orb` element to help bring slightly more depth to our floating ball of CSS:


    .inner-orb {
        background: linear-gradient(#fff 0%, #2E86FB 60%, #283593 100%);
        border-radius: 9999px;
        box-shadow: 0 8px 20px rgba(0,0,0,0.5);
        height: 360px;
        filter: blur(18px);
        left: 20px;
        position: absolute;
        top: 15px;
        width: 360px;
    }

## Poor-man's 3D elements

Clearly implementing something like this will never come close to generating true 3D renders on a website, but it is a fun exercise to see how much further we can push simple CSS. Feel free to fork the above CodePen to play around with different colors and shadow placements.