cinematic-3d-website

name

cinematic-3d-website

description

Use when building a scroll-driven cinematic 3D landing experience for any brand: AI-generated photoreal frames displaced into real 3D by depth maps, a scroll-scrubbed camera fly-through with weighted-leg pacing and per-leg camera moves, mouse parallax, explode-on-scroll shatter transitions, an ember particle field, warp streaks, a live in-scene terminal that runs a REAL product demo, a branded preloader, an exit handoff into the page below, a self-hosted display typeface, phone gyro parallax, and opt-in synthesized ambient sound. Covers 2K image generation via OpenRouter, depth maps, the WebGL engine, chrome (nav/consent) integration, the observe-first verify loop, and the flag-off ship posture.

Cinematic 3D Website

The end-to-end process for building a "fly through the story" landing experience with realtime WebGL, from a blank repo to a verified flag-off ship. Every rule below was learned on a shipped production build; every Gotcha cost real debugging time once. Follow the phases in order.

Phase 0: Ground rules (non-negotiable)

• Ship behind a feature flag. The cinematic replaces a live hero; every iteration lands flag-off (prod byte-identical) with a dev preview route. Flipping the flag is a deliberate launch decision, never a side effect.
• Raw three.js, never @react-three/fiber in Next.js App Router: fiber crashes SSR on React internals. Load the canvas via next/dynamic({ ssr: false }); keep the scaffold component SSR-able so the static fallback renders for crawlers and no-JS.
• Hard mobile / a11y fallback. Motion gate: prefers-reduced-motion, Save-Data, or (coarse pointer AND viewport under ~900px) renders a static hero (one frame, stacked copy, CTAs). Zero WebGL on that path. Phase 7 upgrades this fallback with gyro parallax; it stays zero-WebGL.
• Honest content only. If a screen in the scene shows product numbers, they must match the public claims. Better: run a REAL API call (Phase 3b). A cinematic that lies is a liability.
• Brand colors enter the engine as two props (a cool accent and a hot ember); everything else derives from them.
• Slice-per-commit with full gates. Each slice (pacing, assets, demo, preloader, chrome, typeface, gyro, sound) ships as its own commit: type check, lint, FULL test suite, render-verify on the preview, push, then watch the CI run to its conclusion in the background. Never stack unshipped slices.

Phase 1: Generate the frames (best models, one key, 2K)

Use OpenRouter (OPENROUTER_API_KEY env var; never print it, never commit it).

• Models (verified 2026-07): openai/gpt-5.4-image-2 (GPT Image 2) is the quality leader but slow (~109s per image); use it for the hero frame. google/gemini-3-pro-image (Nano Banana Pro) is fast with the best cross-frame consistency; use it for sequences and all image-to-image work.
• API shape: POST https://openrouter.ai/api/v1/chat/completions with "modalities": ["image", "text"]; the image returns at choices[0].message.images[0].image_url.url as a base64 data URI.
• Resolution is a structured field, not a prompt. Asking for "2048px" inside the prompt is IGNORED; the only working lever is "image_config": {"aspect_ratio": "1:1", "image_size": "2K"}. Provider routing is inconsistent: retry a frame that comes back 1024 (2 tries), and Lanczos-upscale a stubborn one from its best 1024. Ship 2K: at ~300-430KB WebP the sharpness upgrade is dramatic, and a "bandwidth budget" 1024 reads as intentional blur to any reviewer. Pair 2K color frames with texture.anisotropy = renderer.capabilities.getMaxAnisotropy() in the engine or oblique displaced surfaces still smear.
• Prompting: one long cinematic art-direction paragraph per frame (camera position, subject, palette locked to the brand, "photoreal, volumetric light, no text, no watermark"). For sequences, reference the prior frame's composition so N frames read as one journey. Templates in references/prompts.md.
• Review EVERY image by actually looking at it. Regenerate misses; a weak frame drags the whole journey.
• Script: references/gen_stills.py (set SIZE_2K=1). Optimize with references/optimize.py to WebP quality 82-86.

Phase 2: Depth maps (what turns stills into 3D)

• Image-to-depth via google/gemini-3-pro-image: send the frame plus the prompt "Output ONLY a precise grayscale DEPTH MAP of this exact image, same framing. Nearest surfaces pure white, farthest pure black, smooth gradient, no colour, no text." Script: references/gen_depth.py.
• VERIFY each map by eye: near geometry white, background black. A bad map produces warped displacement.
• Regenerate depth after ANY frame change (2K upgrade, re-roll, crop): old maps no longer match the new pixels and the displacement warps.
• Gaussian-blur every depth map before shipping (radius ~7 at 1024). Sharp depth edges are the number one cause of mouse-parallax "screen tear": the plane stretches its texture across each hard near/far transition and reads as smearing, not 3D. Blurring spreads the edge across several mesh cells so the same displacement becomes a smooth lean. Blur AFTER the eye check (blurred maps are harder to review).
• Optimize to grayscale WebP (16-60KB each, 1024 is fine for depth). The engine falls back to luminance-as-depth until the real map loads, so frames can ship first.

Phase 3: The engine (references/depth-fly-engine.tsx)

One pinned canvas for the whole scroll range. A single eased progress value (0..1) drives everything: eased += (target - eased) * 0.09.

Nine systems, in dependency order:

1. Depth-displaced frames: per-frame subdivided plane (200x120) with a vertex shader that samples the depth map, pushes pos.z by (d - 0.32) * uDisplace and adds depth-scaled pointer parallax pos.xy += uMouse * (d - 0.32) * uParallax. Keep uParallax around 0.4: this in-shader XY shift is FAKE parallax that stretches the texture at depth edges, and at 0.85 it visibly tears. Carry the strong-3D feel with the CAMERA instead: raise the camera-position mouse gain (~0.11/0.08), which moves the view against the z-displaced relief for true view-dependent parallax that cannot stretch pixels. Cover-fit UVs; crossfade opacity 1 - dist/step; per-frame fly-in zoom; max anisotropy on every color texture.
2. Explode-on-scroll shatter: a vertex-shader cell grid (hash2(floor(uv * vec2(7,5)))); shards fly radially and toward the camera as uShatter ramps over the frame's exit band; the fragment tints shards toward the hot color.
3. Ember particle field: ~1300 additive points between camera and frames, upward drift with mod-wrap, seeded flicker, pointer parallax at its own depth rate. This is what makes transitions feel continuous.
4. Warp light-streaks: a camera-attached quad with a radial streak shader, driven by uWarp = s * (1 - s) * 4 where s is the max active shatter, so it peaks mid-seam and is invisible at rest (skip the draw when idle).
5. Live terminal monitor: an offscreen 2D canvas rendered to a CanvasTexture on a subdivided, angled plane. It types a real session (config-driven lines), animates a progress bar, blinks a caret, gets scanlines and a glowing bezel in the fragment shader, floats idly, and SHATTERS on exit with the same cell-grid shader. Throttle texture redraws (every 4th frame, only while visible). Place it opposite the copy column. Phase 3b makes it run a REAL demo.
6. Cinematic camera: settle-in intro dolly (camera.z += (1 - intro) * 0.4, intro eased over ~1.6s), mouse banking (rotation.z = -mx * 0.045), idle lissajous micro-drift, a pointer-velocity "energy" accumulator (decay 0.93/frame) that excites the embers and deepens the displacement, PLUS per-leg camera grammar: each journey leg gets one move (lateral drift, push-in, rise, yaw sweep) shaped by sin(pi * legProgress) so the move is ZERO at both beat centers and no seam ever pops. While the terminal is up, damp embers ~65% and warp ~50% so the product moment reads calm.
7. DOM intro: the first beat's copy rises out of blur via a one-shot CSS animation, reduced-motion guarded.
8. Branded preloader veil ( in engine.css): a solid brand-dark overlay with a letter-spaced wordmark and a thin progress bar that counts frame textures as they land, then fades out. Count texture ERRORS toward the total too, or one failed asset hangs the veil forever. Depth maps are excluded (the luminance fallback covers them). See the stacking-context Gotcha before styling it.

Performance: DPR cap 2, IntersectionObserver + visibilitychange pause, dispose everything in cleanup.

Phase 3b: The live demo (the conversion hook)

The terminal should not just replay a script: wire a runDemo prop that calls YOUR real public demo API and types the genuine result.

• Typing model: give each terminal line an optional t0 start time and advance a sequential clock (start = max(clock, line.t0), clock = start + chars / CPS). Appended lines type in order no matter when they arrive; the whole transcript stays scrub-safe.
• Trigger: a keypress (e.g. "D") gated on the terminal actually being visible (cliOpacity > 0.5), ignored while focus is in an input/textarea/ contentEditable, debounced while a demo is running, and re-armed ~6s after completion. Append the command line, a progress bar with t0 = now, then the real result line (hot color) or a graceful busy line on failure.
• Advertise it with a dim hint line ("press D: compress a real document, live") only when runDemo is provided.
• The demo result is the one number on the whole page a skeptic can verify themselves. Never fake it.

Phase 4: Copy beats (legibility laws)

• Beat text opacity half-width MUST be under 0.5 * step (0.42 works) so adjacent beats can never overlap. The failure mode is two double-exposed headlines, and it will happen at exactly the transition your screenshots skip.
• Never animate opacity in a CSS keyframe on an element whose opacity is driven inline by the scroll handler: the running animation wins and pins it visible. Keyframe the transform only.
• Keep copy in one consistent zone (lower-left) with a scrim; put in-scene elements (the terminal) in the opposite zone.
• No em-dashes or fabricated numbers in visible copy.

Phase 4b: Display typeface

A distinct display face on the beat titles is a large share of the "designed, not generated" feel, and it costs $0.

• Self-host via next/font/local with a CSS variable (e.g. --font-cine); put the variable class on the stage wrapper AND the static fallback root, then style .gc-film-title { font-family: var(--font-cine, inherit); }.
• Cascade trap: if a shared base class (your generic .title) sets font-family later in the sheet, a single-class override silently loses. Use a descendant selector (.stage .title) so specificity wins regardless of sheet order, and verify with computed font-family in the browser, not by reading the CSS.
• Tighten display tracking slightly (about -0.015em) at clamp sizes.
• Free faces that work: Clash Display (Fontshare, ITF Free Font License, self-hosting allowed; commit the woff2 plus a license README) reads premium-2026; Instrument Serif is the editorial risk; avoid defaulting to Space Grotesk (a recognized AI-default tell).
• Font choice on a flag-off surface is a reversible design fork: pick by evidence, ship it, let the owner veto on the rendered result. Do not stall the build on a taste question.

Phase 5: Pacing (weighted legs + linger remap)

Implemented in references/stage-template.tsx as LEG_WEIGHTS + journeyProgress():

• Weighted legs: hero and payoff legs get more scroll distance than transit legs (e.g. [1.3, 0.9, 0.95, 1.25]).
• Linger remap: within each leg, a smoothstep (s = x * x * (3 - 2x)) lingers at both beat centers (zero slope) and accelerates through the seam.
• Invariants: f(0)=0, f(1)=1, monotonic. Scroll is a scrubber; the remap must reverse exactly, and seam frames must be untouched.
• Seam velocity law (credit: scroll-world): camera velocity must never reverse across a transition. Keep all transition effects parameter-driven (pure functions of progress), never time-based one-way, and they reverse cleanly for free.
• Camera grammar by concept: product or luxury = slow half-orbit; industrial = low lateral track with foreground parallax; travel = rise-and-reveal then descending swoop. Encode each as a per-leg sin(pi * x) arc so it zeros at beat centers.

Phase 6: Chrome integration (nav, consent, page seam)

The cinematic lives under your site's global chrome. Audit what actually sits on top of it:

• Nav: the right pattern is scroll-aware transparency: a background layer at opacity: scrolled ? 1 : 0 (threshold ~50px) with blur when on. If your nav already does this, the cinematic needs NO nav change: verify computed opacity at scroll 0 instead of rebuilding.
• Consent banner: a full-width bottom bar sits directly on the payoff CTA and reads as damage. Reshape it into a compact corner card (max-width ~340px, radius 12, same copy, same choices and handlers: geometry only). This improves every page, not just the cinematic.
• Exit seam: the Phase 3 handoff gradient must target the PAGE background token so the dissolve lands in both themes.

Phase 7: Phone gyro parallax (the mobile cinematic)

The static fallback upgrades to a gyro-driven hero with zero WebGL:

• Listen to deviceorientation; clamp gamma to about +/-30 and use beta - 45 (a phone held naturally sits near beta 45); map to a max ~14px/10px translate; lerp at 0.08/frame; apply scale(1.12) translate3d(...) to the background layer with the parent overflow: hidden.
• Respect prefers-reduced-motion (skip entirely).
• iOS 13+: DeviceOrientationEvent.requestPermission() exists and MUST be called from a user gesture. Bind on the first tap; stay static if declined; never prompt on load. Desktop and Android bind immediately (no requestPermission function).
• Verify without a phone: browser-devtools emulation with viewport 390x844x3,mobile,touch flips pointer: coarse so the fallback mounts; then dispatch a synthetic new DeviceOrientationEvent('deviceorientation', {beta, gamma}) and assert the transform moves in the expected DIRECTION with the expected x/y RATIO. Assert the vector, not the absolute settle: rAF runs slow under emulation and repeated synthetic dispatches through devtools bridges are unreliable.

Phase 8: Opt-in ambient sound (references/cinematic-sound.ts)

Fully synthesized, so there is no audio asset to license:

• Graph: a 4s brown-noise loop (leaky integrator over white noise) into a lowpass (base ~180Hz) into a gain (0 at rest, ~0.055 on).
• Opt-in only: construct NOTHING until the user hits a small "sound" toggle chip; create the AudioContext inside that gesture (autoplay-policy safe); setTargetAtTime ramps for click-free on/off; dispose on unmount.
• Feed journey progress: brighten the filter and lift the gain through the transit legs with a sin(pi * p) arc, settling darker at the payoff.
• Verify: click the toggle and assert the pressed state flips (a failed AudioContext build returns false and the label stays "enable"), scroll with sound on (no errors), toggle off.

Phase 9: Verify like a director (observe-first)

1. Type-check and lint, then run a dev server with the flag on.
2. Screenshot the MOMENTS, not even intervals: the intro after it settles, each seam mid-shatter, every element's entry and exit band, the terminal AFTER it finishes typing, pointer far-left vs far-right (parallax proof), and the exit hand-off into the page below.
3. Check seams in BOTH scroll directions.
4. Read the console. Any WebGL or three.js error is stop-the-line. The classic silent killer: a uniform used in both shader stages with different precision fails VALIDATE_STATUS and the mesh just does not draw. Declare precision highp float; in fragments that share uniforms with the vertex stage.
5. The full expanded checklist (preloader lifecycle, handoff opacity at mid vs end, live-demo network receipt, gyro vector, sound toggle) is in references/verify.md.

Phase 10: Ship loop (per slice)

1. Full gates: type-check, lint, the WHOLE test suite (a scoped run hides stacked failures). If the full suite fails with timeouts near the per-test limit under parallel load, rerun the failing files in ISOLATION before believing the red: pass-in-isolation means load flake, not a break.
2. Render-verify the slice on the preview route with tool-measured receipts (computed styles, network calls, screenshots), not eyeballs.
3. Commit flag-off (mention receipts in the body), push, and watch the CI run to its conclusion in the background. CI-green is the receipt; a local pass is not.
4. The flag flip to prod is the owner's explicit call, never automatic.

Phase 11: Archetype B — the editorial-fusion landing

Phases 1-10 build Archetype A: the full-bleed scroll-scrubbed journey (pinned canvas, copy beats crossfading over a camera flight). There is a second shape worth mastering: Archetype B, the editorial fusion — the layout language of the best 2026 dev-tool sites, powered by your WebGL stack where it counts. Ship A as the immersive experience, B as the conversion landing; they share every asset and the engine.

Step 1 — study a reference live (references/study-a-reference-site.md): screenshot ladder + tech probe + section outline. The recurring finding: the "$50k feel" on these sites is CSS keyframes + IntersectionObserver + stills — zero WebGL. Their moat is layout discipline; yours is the engine. Fuse them.

Step 2 — adopt the layout system (all observed live, all cheap):

• Tokens: near-black base, ALL body copy in a mono face, display face for headlines only, ONE accent spent only where data lives.
• Eyebrow spine: SECTION-NAME with a glowing accent dot, mono-uppercase, opens every section.
• Product-as-hero-art: a window-chromed panel bleeding past the hero column beats abstract art — and yours runs the LIVE depth relief inside it.
• Zig-zag rows: left copy / right real product panel, alternating.
• Contrast inversion: one light section (grid-paper bg, border-matrix cells) as rhythm, not theme.
• Settle discipline: ONE entrance reveal per section (single IntersectionObserver, data-* markers, fire-once, unobserve), then stillness. Perpetual motion only for cursor-blink-class elements. This makes reduced-motion support nearly free: add .is-in to everything.
• Honesty guard: pre-traction, a measured-facts marquee (every number test-locked) replaces the logo wall. Never invent logos or metrics.

Step 3 — mount the engine in hero mode (the fusion move):

• Reuse the SAME depth-fly canvas with progressRef pinned at 0: idle drift + mouse parallax with no scroll scrubbing.
• Minimum 2 frames/depths even in hero mode — the camera math needs a valid leg; 1 frame renders black.
• Gate the canvas on pointer: fine AND motion-OK; a static background-image still fills the same box otherwise.
• Mount inside a window-chrome card whose canvas box has a fixed aspect-ratio — the engine sizes to its mount (clientWidth/Height), so the wrapper defines the stage.
• Cinema break: one full-bleed still with rAF-throttled scroll parallax (scale(1.18) headroom so translation never reveals edges).

Step 4 — the live terminal section: click-to-run against a real no-auth demo endpoint, sequential-clock line typing, a graceful error line, and a RUN AGAIN state. This is the section a static competitor cannot copy.

Template: references/editorial-fusion-template.tsx + references/editorial-fusion.css (verbatim from a shipped build; adapt points in the header).

Design lessons (what actually makes it feel world-class)

1. Continuity beats fidelity. Gorgeous stills that crossfade read as a slideshow. The wow lives in the systems that BRIDGE frames: persistent particles, seam energy, a camera that never stops moving.
2. Show the product doing something real. The most-praised element is a terminal typing an honest session; a keypress that runs a REAL API call is stronger still. Generic beauty is ignorable; a live product moment is the conversion hook.
3. Interactivity is the moat of realtime over video. Depth-scaled parallax, banking, cursor energy, gyro on phones: none are possible in a pre-rendered scrub.
4. Transitions ARE content. An explode-on-scroll beats any crossfade. Peak intensity mid-seam with x * (1 - x) * 4.
5. Sharpness is a feature. 2K frames plus max anisotropy changed the perceived quality more than any shader tweak. Do not pre-optimize to 1024 on a bandwidth hunch; the reviewer reads it as blur.
6. Legibility is a hard law. Text bugs, not 3D bugs, are what make an ambitious build read as broken.
7. The frame around the art matters. Preloader, exit handoff, quiet nav, compact consent, a real display face: the chrome pass is what moves the build from "impressive demo" to "designed site".
8. Ship behind a flag so ambition can move fast while prod stays inert.

Gotchas (each cost real time once)

Trap	Fix
@react-three/fiber SSR crash	raw three.js + dynamic ssr:false
position: sticky dead under an ancestor overflow clip	manual fixed/absolute pin driven by the scroll handler
Beat text double-exposure	opacity half-width under 0.5 * step
CSS keyframe opacity vs inline fade	keyframe transform only
Shader VALIDATE_STATUS false, mesh silently invisible	match uniform precision across stages
Prompt-level "2048px" resolution request	ignored; use the structured image_config field, retry small returns, Lanczos-upscale stubborn frames
2K frames still smear at oblique angles	texture.anisotropy = getMaxAnisotropy()
Depth maps stale after a frame upgrade	regenerate depth whenever the pixels change
Mouse parallax reads as "screen tear" smearing, not 3D	texture stretching at hard depth-map edges; Gaussian-blur the depth maps (radius ~7) AND drop the in-shader XY parallax to ~0.4, moving the 3D feel to camera-position mouse gain against the z relief
Preloader veil renders UNDER the copy overlays	an explicit z-index on the canvas host creates a stacking context that traps its children; remove it (DOM order already layers the canvas below)
Preloader hangs forever on one bad asset	count texture onError toward the loaded total
Exit-handoff gradient washes out mid-journey copy	scroll-drive its opacity (0 until the final leg) since it sits above the beats
Display font silently not applied	a later single-class base rule wins; use a descendant selector and verify COMPUTED font-family in the browser
Terminal lines type out of order when appended late	sequential clock with per-line t0, never per-line absolute timers
Demo hotkey fires while user types in a form	ignore when target is input/textarea/contentEditable; gate on terminal visibility; re-arm on a timer
iOS gyro dead	requestPermission needs a user gesture; bind on first tap, static on decline
Sound blocked by autoplay policy	create the AudioContext inside the toggle gesture, nothing at load

References

• references/depth-fly-engine.tsx: the full engine, verbatim from the shipped production build (nine systems incl. the live-demo terminal and preloader veil; raw three.js, config-driven, self-cleaning).
• references/stage-template.tsx: the scaffold, verbatim (manual pin, weighted-leg pacing, beats, motion gate, exit handoff, typeface wiring, gyro fallback, sound toggle). Header lists the adapt points.
• references/cinematic-sound.ts: the synthesized ambient engine (drop-in).
• references/engine.css: the complete stage styling (pin, beats, copy, scrollcue, preloader, handoff, sound chip, static fallback) on CSS tokens.
• references/gen_stills.py (2K via SIZE_2K=1), references/gen_depth.py, references/optimize.py: the OpenRouter + Pillow asset pipeline.
• references/prompts.md: prompt templates and the camera grammar table.
• references/editorial-fusion-template.tsx + references/editorial-fusion.css: Archetype B — the editorial-fusion landing (11 sections, hero-mode engine mount, IO reveal system, measured-facts marquee, cinema break, live terminal section, light contrast section), verbatim from a shipped build.
• references/study-a-reference-site.md: the repeatable reference-site study procedure (screenshot ladder + tech/section probes) with the 2026 editorial-site findings as the worked example.
• references/verify.md: the full QA checklist.