CSS Animation

CSS Animation – Jumping Box with @property – Part 1

You can make an orange-colored 3D-ish box jump up and down with CSS. Learn how to make this animation in this step-by-step article.

Pyxofy

Oct 15, 2023 • 7 min read

Photo by Abbie Bernet / Unsplash

Introduction

Have you ever tried to make a box jump? Is that even possible?

In this two-part step-by-step article, you’ll create a jumping box animation using the CSS clip-path: path() function and @property at-rule.

Part 1. Make the Box and Shadow

Part 2. Make the Jumping Box Animation

Read this article if you’re unfamiliar with @property. You can read this article for details about path() function.

💡

Firefox doesn’t support CSS @property at the time of this writing.

Safari and Chromium-based browsers support @property. Check for the latest browser support if you use @property for production websites.

CSS at-rule: `@property` | Can I use... Support tables for HTML5, CSS3, etc

Can I use... Support tables for HTML5, CSS3, etc

Preview

Jumping Box Animation

Prerequisites

Essential CSS and HTML knowledge will help you understand the concepts and techniques introduced in this article. Jump over to this article if you require an HTML and CSS primer.

We assume that you have set up tools to create CSS animation. If you haven’t, this article will show you how to set them up.

Please read this article if you’re unfamiliar with CSS animation and the @keyframes at-rule property.

HTML Structure

<div class="container">
  <!-- Box -->
  <div class="box-container">
    <div class="box-top"></div>
    <div class="box-left"></div>
    <div class="box-right"></div>
  </div>
  <!-- Shadow -->
  <div class="shadow"></div>
</div>

container is the outermost enclosure. It enables the content to be centered and draws a light gray border. The rest of the divs represent each animation sequence.

Keep the HTML structure as is for each animation to display correctly.

Body and Container Div CSS

CSS code for the body and container div.

/* Body and Container Settings */
/* Center shapes */
body {
  margin: 0;
  padding: 0;
  height: 100vh;
  display: flex;
  justify-content: center;
  align-items: center;
  flex-wrap: wrap;
}

/* Set background and border color */
.container {
  min-width: 500px;
  height: 500px;
  border: 5px solid lightgray;
  background: #121212;
  position: relative;
  margin: 5px;
  display: flex;
  justify-content: center;
  align-items: center;
  overflow: hidden;
}

Make Box with `path()`

The box will have three components

Top
Left side
Right side

In this section, we won’t dive deep into the path() function Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) commands. Please read this article for in-depth information about each SVG command.

To group the three components, we first make a container.

/* Box */
.box-container {
  position: absolute;
  top: 220px;
  left: 100px;
  width: 250px;
  height: 250px;
}

The container position is set to absolute and is placed 220px from the top and 100px from the left.
width and height are set to 250px.

The box is styled to be cube-shaped with three sides visible. The light comes from the upper right corner, and we adjust the colors accordingly.

.box-top {
  position: absolute;
  width: inherit;
  height: inherit;
  background: #fcc891;
  clip-path: path("M 154 63 L 239 94 L 155 127 L 72 94 Z");
}

Similar to the box container, the box top component is positioned as absolute.
width and height are inherited from the box container and are automatically set to 250px with CSS property value inherit.
The background color is set to #fcc891, which is a light orange hue.
clip-path: path("M 154 63 L 239 94 L 155 127 L 72 94 Z"); makes the diamond shape top component.

Next up is the left-side component.

.box-left {
  position: absolute;
  width: inherit;
  height: inherit;
  background: #ac5c05;
  clip-path: path("M 72 94 L 72 199 L 153 243 L 155 127 Z");
}

#ac5c05 is a dark orange tone.
clip-path: path("M 72 94 L 72 199 L 153 243 L 155 127 Z"); makes the left-side component.

Let’s make the last component.

.box-right {
  width: inherit;
  height: inherit;
  background: #fab367;
  clip-path: path("M 153 243 L 238 200 L 239 94 L 155 127 Z");
}

The background color is #fab367, a mid-tone orange color.
The right-side component is made with clip-path: path("M 153 243 L 238 200 L 239 94 L 155 127 Z");.

The box shape is completed. In the next section, you’ll be making the box shadow.

Make Shadow

In this section, you’ll be making the box shadow.

/* Shadow */
.shadow {
  position: absolute;
  top: 465px;
  left: 170px;
  width: 170px;
  --shadow-color: #ac5c05;
  border-bottom: 5px var(--shadow-color) solid;
  filter: blur(1px);
}

Same as the box shape, the shadow position is set to absolute.
The shadow is placed 465px from the top and 170px from the left.
Shadow width is set to 170px.
--shadow-color: #ac5c05; is a CSS custom property you’ll be animating in part 2 of this article.
border-bottom: 5px var(--shadow-color) solid; draws a solid line using the CSS border-bottom property.
A blur effect is added with filter: blur(1px).

Your completed box and shadow should look like this.

You can see and play with the complete code on Pyxofy’s CodePen page.

See the Pen CSS Animation - Jumping Box with @property by Pyxofy (@pyxofy) on CodePen.

Conclusion

You learned how to make the box and shadow components in part 1 of this two-part article series.

You used the CSS path() function to write Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) commands to draw the top, left, and right side of the box shape. To make the shadow, we used the CSS bottom border property.

In part 2 of this article, we’ll make the box jump using the CSS @keyframs at-rule. We’ll use @property to change the shadow’s color depending on the box’s height from the ground.

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