3D Technical Artist Browser Lab Visualization

Real-Time 3D Technical Artist (Three.js / WebGL) Browser-based science lab simulation
About the project
We are building a browser-based 3D virtual science lab where students assemble apparatus, perform experiments, and are assessed on their technique, all rendered in real time with Three.js / React Three Fiber. The simulation runs on ordinary school hardware, including low-end Chromebooks, and must look convincing while staying fast and deterministic.
We have a working simulation engine and physics. What we need is someone to raise the visual fidelity of the equipment and effects from "recognizable " to "believable " (i.e. real glassware, real metal instruments, real fluid behavior) within a strict real-time budget.
What you'll work on
You will own the real-time 3D art and technical-art layer, including:

• Modeling, sourcing, and optimizing lab equipment (microscopes, glassware, burners, centrifuges, condensers, and more) as clean, correctly structured glTF/GLB assets that drop into our existing loader and wire to our interaction code.
• Authoring P  materials and lighting so glass reads as glass, steel as steel, and fluids as translucent, refractive liquid, not as colored plastic.
• Building and tuning real-time effects: pouring fluid streams with splash and ripples, vapor and steam, Bunsen flames, heat shimmer, condensation.
• Writing and modifying GLSL shaders for the effects above.
• Keeping everything within a Chromebook-class performance budget (triangle counts, texture memory, draw calls, frame time) without sacrificing the look.
• Collaborating with our engineers so your assets and effects integrate cleanly into a React Three Fiber codebase, with parts named and structured for interaction (e.g. a microscope's nosepiece, focus knobs, and stage must be individually addressable).

• Shipped real-time 3D in the browser with Three.js / WebGL . We need production work that runs in a browser — not offline renders, not Unity/Unreal-only experience. You will be asked to show interactive, in-browser examples.
• P  material authoring — deep, practical command of metalness/roughness workflows, environment maps / image-based lighting, and transmission/refraction for transparent materials like glass and liquid.
• glTF / GLB asset pipeline — modeling or sourcing (Blender or equivalent), optimization (decimation, LOD, texture atlasing), and clean export with a sane node hierarchy and naming that downstream code can bind to.
• Real-time performance discipline — you think in triangle budgets, texture memory, draw calls, and frame time as a matter of habit, and you optimize for low-end hardware, not just your own workstation.
• GLSL shader ability — you can write and modify shaders for materials and effects, not only wire up premade ones.
• Real-time VFX / particle systems — believable, cheap effects (fluids, smoke/vapor, flames, splashes).
• Enough code fluency to collaborate in our stack — you can read and lightly modify JSX / React Three Fiber, and you understand how your assets are consumed at runtime.

• Experience with React Three Fiber specifically (not just vanilla Three.js).
• A track record optimizing for constrained devices (mobile, Chromebooks, low-end GPUs).
• Scientific, technical, medical, or educational visualization experience — anywhere accuracy of the depicted object mattered as much as its beauty.
• Comfort taking real-world reference seriously and getting proportions and details right.