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Journal 15 entries

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Working notes on generating, cleaning and shipping 3D assets — from the first prompt to the final export.

  1. Latest 01

    Concept art to finished 3D: a modern indie workflow

    Twelve enemy designs and three weeks for one artist: the stage-by-stage pipeline that gets a character into the engine in ten hours instead of forty.

    Pipeline 7 min read 1,523 words

  2. 02

    Making 3D fast enough for the browser and for AR

    A 34 MB GLB takes 14 seconds to appear on a phone. The same model, correctly compressed, takes under one — and the pipeline to get…

    Engineering 6 min read 1,425 words

  3. 03

    The prompt vocabulary that changes the mesh, not just the texture

    Half the words in a typical 3D prompt only paint the surface. Here is the vocabulary that actually moves vertices, with the geometric effect of each…

    Guides 7 min read 1,577 words

  4. 04

    Image-to-3D: how to shoot reference photos that actually reconstruct

    Most failed image-to-3D results are photography problems, not model problems. Focal length, four angles and a grey sweep fix about 80% of them.

    Guides 7 min read 1,552 words

  5. 05

    Building a game-ready asset library without a studio budget

    Building a usable prop library without a studio budget: what to generate, what to buy, and how to keep the file sizes sane.

    Business 7 min read 1,513 words

  6. 06

    Standard or extended: how 3D asset licensing really works

    One question decides which licence you need, and it is not how many projects you have. It is whether anyone downstream can extract the model file.

    Business 7 min read 1,444 words

  7. 07

    Unreal 5 and Nanite: do polycounts still matter?

    Nanite makes triangle count nearly free to render and expensive to store. Here is what still costs you, with real budgets for generated and scanned assets.

    Engineering 7 min read 1,436 words

  8. 08

    Importing a generated model into Unity: the checklist I actually use

    Twelve settings, one texture channel swap, and a scale check. Get these right and a generated asset drops into URP looking the way it did in…

    Guides 6 min read 1,347 words

  9. 09

    GLB, FBX, OBJ, USDZ: picking the right format for the engine you actually use

    The same 38k-triangle model ships at 22.3 MB or 1.8 MB depending on the container. Here is what each format carries, what it drops, and which…

    Guides 6 min read 1,355 words

  10. 10

    UV maps: why AI-generated models sometimes need a second pass

    The mesh is fine and the texture is fine, but your decal still smears across the cheek guard. Here is what automatic unwrapping gets wrong and…

    Pipeline 6 min read 1,417 words