3D web rebuild of Ming dynasty 'He Zhou Ji' walnut boat: 28mm, 5 figures, 8 windows
dotey · x · 2026-09-21
Baoyu (@dotey) released an online 3D artistic reconstruction of the walnut-core boat described in the Ming dynasty essay 'He Zhou Ji': a 28mm boat with 5 figures, 8 openable windows and 34 engraved characters, with real-world scale calibration referencing an IKEA tabletop and a walnut for size.
The standout is the audio-led reading mode: a narration of the full essay drives the camera through the cabin, figures and stern inscription, with sentence-level seeking, pause and speed control; dragging the model pauses narration and a 'follow' button resumes. Everything (renderer, model code, textures) is embedded in a single page requiring only WebGL 2. The project explicitly frames itself as a text-constrained artistic reconstruction, not a scan or exact restoration.
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