Threadway 3D scene

The Threadway 3D scene is the art behind Threadway, the town street. It is the only place in Arborwake that runs as a live 3D environment. The cells that walk through it stay flat 2D sprites. This page covers the art; the location page covers the street's residents and services.

How it was made#

• From concepts to models. The user's building studies became Meshy models, or simple primitive builds in the street's toon materials. The user rejected Meshy's own textures on the Studios tower as "dizzying", so simple architecture is now built from primitives.
• One build script. build_podium.py (with its kits) builds the whole street, including the terraced podium, the west forecourt and the Studios. The user approved the west layout F and the east gap fillers on 31 October.
• The back row. The buildings seen through the street gaps are real buildings in the style of candidate s04, not plain blocks. Their colours are pulled toward the haze (saturation ×0.45, 35% haze). The user said "Looks right" on 31 October. Back-row roofs carry shrubs, not trees, and string lines are solid 3D tubes.
• Hand detail. Studios doors and wall detail are drawn in Aseprite, never built in Blender. The user called the stock doors and panels "absolutely horrible".
• The Neural Highway. The highway is a white-matter tract inside a walkable glass tunnel, built from a modular kit (tract_kit.py). Stops are portholes; only Threadway has a full station.

PAINT_TILT: art that holds at every tilt#

On 31 October the user said the 2.5D camera will move between at least two tilts, perhaps more. A texture painted for one camera slides off its faces at another tilt. At 30°, the old workshop projection broke into smears and a black band. The rules since then:

• every hand-painted projection is frozen to the camera it was painted for (PAINT_TILT);
• roofs, decks and floors get plain colours or real geometry;
• painted plants and signs in front of a wall become 3D pieces;
• new art is checked at 15°, 30° and 45° (THREADWAY_TILT).

The rebuilt workshop was approved on 31 October.

Live in the game#

On 1 November the user replaced the "entirely 2D" rule for Threadway. Codex exported P24 for the browser. The source scene is 1.66 GB with 4,737 objects. Buildings, trees, rails and lamps hide the 2D cells through the depth buffer, so no PNG slicing is needed. The lead calls the first engine "a working pixel-style scene study, not a pixel-identical reproduction" of the offline composite.

Movement and Map then added streaming. Startup transfer fell from about 482 MB to about 105 MB, and ready time from 11.3 s to 2.9 s, with no geometry simplification.

Injury states study#

Proposed For the Act V injury, a three-state 3D study (intact, ruptured, recovering) adds baked meshes in their own collections and never edits the originals. On 2 November the user ruled that the player must still be able to cross Threadway. The gap now stops at a walkable canal-side ledge. The lead's audit records this study as uncommitted and unapproved.

Development#

• In the alpha: the integration connected physical travel through Threadway, with the tube working both ways (69c7b5470).
• Open: upper Commons, Tea House and apartment stairs; placeholder interiors; close-view frame-time spikes; and the release licence for compiled third-party geometry.
• Rule for small changes: preview only the changed object (THREADWAY_ONLY), never a full render (see Review process).

Gallery#

See also#

• Threadway
• Environment art
• Studios interior
• Art direction

Sources#

1. 5ed726064:art/environment/blender-study/threadway-street/QUEUE.mdcopy
2. 5ed726064:art/environment/blender-study/threadway-street/TRACT_KIT.mdcopy
3. 1ded4c01c:docs/art-audit/2026-11-01/AUDIT.mdcopy
4. b89f778c2:docs/ops/agent-messages/2026-11-02-lead-reconciled-game-integration.mdcopy
5. docs/ops/agent-messages/2026-11-02-lead-full-project-reconciliation-audit.md (working copy, not in Git)